


Starways, Season 1: Fight or Flight Response

by CountDorku



Series: Starways [1]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Abduction, Alien Character(s), Aliens, Alternate Universe - Farscape Fusion, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Alternate Universe - Space Opera, Amnesia, Bad Puns, Broken Bones, Canon Lesbian Character, Canon Non-Binary Character, Car Chases, Characters are Over 18 Unless Specified Otherwise, Crimes & Criminals, Dreams and Nightmares, Escape, Fighter Pilots, Gen, Heist, Human Trafficking, Infiltration, Lesbian Catra (She-Ra), Lesbian Disaster Adora (She-Ra), Lesbians in Space, Mild Blood, On the Run, One-Sided Adora/Catra (She-Ra) - Freeform, One-Sided Attraction, Outer Space, POV Lesbian Character, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prison, Rashomon Gag, Rebellion, Scars, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Secrets, Slow Burn, Snark, Space Opera, Spaceships, Stars, Strange Chapter Titles, Swearing, Trans Bow (She-Ra), Violence, or the space equivalent anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:33:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 89,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22188676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CountDorku/pseuds/CountDorku
Summary: "My name is Squadron Leader Adora, Horde ID number SP0P-19B5. I was a Horde soldier, a fighter pilot. I thought I was helping bring peace to the universe. Doing what was best for everyone.I was attempting to disable an escaping prisoner transport when my fighter was wrecked. I was brought on board, held captive by the rebels who took over the ship.I learned that I’d been lied to. Manipulated. I can’t go back to the Horde. I won’t. I was a Horde soldier…and now…now I don’t know what I am. But it looks like there’s only one way I’m going to find out."Or: Adora deserts the Horde's space navy to join a ship fleeing across Horde space, gradually making its way to Brightmoon and the Free Territories.
Relationships: Adora & Bow & Glimmer (She-Ra), Adora & Catra (She-Ra), Adora & Perfuma (She-Ra), Adora/Glimmer (She-Ra), Bow & Entrapta (She-Ra), Catra & Lonnie (She-Ra), Entrapta & Mermista (She-Ra), Glimmer & Double Trouble (She-Ra), Mermista & Perfuma (She-Ra), Other Relationship Tags to Be Added
Series: Starways [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1597225
Comments: 80
Kudos: 96





	1. Any Ship Can Be a Minesweeper - Once

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Horde Squadron Leader Adora learns that the Horde may not be as benevolent as it says it is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This poster was done by [EtherianFrigatebird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EtherianFrigatebird/pseuds/EtherianFrigatebird); check out her stuff on this site or [on tumblr](https://etherianfrigatebird.tumblr.com/post/617424103856652288/commission-for-my-friend-acephysicskarkat-s-fic). Also AO3's formatting is kind of cutting off one side because [shrug]

The Horde portal gate hung over the Ostag system like the eye of a cruel god. Beneath it, the Horde fleet hung in formation, keeping a stable distance through tiny, almost invisible pulses of thrust, squadrons of Carnivore fighters spiralling around the warships that dwarfed them. The carrier _Fright Zone_ and the battleships _Onslaught_ and _Chelicera_ formed the heart of the fleet, with a penumbra of smaller craft surrounding them. Soon, the portal gate would open, and the fleet would head to Stevess, home of a Horde supply depot and the BST-ILN maximum security prison – a journey that would take weeks, maybe months, at jump drive, but the portal system could shave it down to hours. If all went to plan, within a fortnight they would be inbound to Elberon to join the Horde offensive there.

All did not go to plan.

Light flared in the darkness as the prison transport _Constrictor_ made a break for it. Its engines blazed, and it swerved out of the Horde formation, plunging into the rings surrounding the gas giant.

Adora pivoted her Carnivore to follow it, tuning out all thoughts of the beauty of the view and concentrating on the tactical situation. The fighter had the same hull as every other Horde Carnivore: a surprisingly sleek cockpit, primary weapons extending out and forwards from the sides, and the distinctive “stinger” communicator turret mounted just above the primary engines. On the whole, it closely resembled a scorpion with wings on either side instead of legs – which made sense, given the number of scorpioni in the Horde’s ranks.

She thumbed the controls for the communicator. “Squadron four, we have a runner. Repeat, we have a runner. Form up on me and move to pursue the _Constrictor_.”

“Leave it to the big boys, One.” This was Two – Catra. “No sense getting dinged up chasing it when the _Fright Zone_ and the _Onslaught_ are around. If we’re going to the Elberon front soon, we’ll need our rides to be intact, right?”

“We can’t sit this one out, Two. Most of them are locked in formation; they won’t be able to come around in time to have a clear shot. It’s up to us.”

“Okay, fine, One. But let’s get this done fast before I change my mind.”

“Cut the chatter, Two. Form up! Remember, we just need to bring it to a halt; no disintegrations unless absolutely necessary.”

Moving _mostly_ like well-oiled machinery, the squadron shifted into a wedge-shaped pursuit formation and followed the trail of the transport.

* * *

Four – Kyle – was the first to break pursuit. A fast-moving chunk of rock pierced through his shields and wrecked up his port-side engine. Rogelio, in position five, followed quickly; his telemetry was clear, but he was very emphatic that his systems were acting up, and he should escort Kyle back to the carrier.

Adora issued a mental shrug. Rogelio’s head wouldn’t be in the game anyway while Kyle was navigating his way out of a planetary ring on one engine, and she, Catra and Lonnie were better at this anyway – Rogelio tended to favour the ground.

As they plunged deeper into the rings, Lonnie opened her channel.

“Should’ve been more careful; I’ve lost half my systems. Rock caught me from an unexpected angle. I’m gonna try and head back to the _Fright Zone_.”

“Understood, Three.” 

A few moments later, Catra swore, and her Carnivore’s display on Adora’s HUD began to redden. “I’m hit, but not bad.” 

“Two, I can see your telemetry. Break off. Hook up with Three and get out of here; I’ll take the transport.”

“I’m not going to-”

“The _Constrictor_ isn’t armed, and with how long those models have been in service, it’s probably taking a lot more punishment from this than I am.” She smiled into her headset. “Relax, Catra. I can handle this. You go get your ship fixed up. You’re gonna need it for the Elberon front, right?”

“I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that if you pull this off solo, it’ll look great on your record.”

“You have your orders, Two. The Horde can’t afford to lose you.” _And neither can I_ , she added mentally.

“Yes _ma’am_ ,” said Catra, bitterness seeping into her voice. She broke off as Adora swerved through the cluster of rocks. A lesser pilot would have been in trouble, but Adora had worked hard for her skills; the Carnivore fit her like a second skin, and the rocks .

Adora came out of the cluster with a perfect snap-roll. The blocky shape of the prison transport was ahead…but so was a grey cloud, and it was already too close to dodge.

It reached out and engulfed her. Adora’s shields trembled, and the alert lights in her cockpit began to glow red, bathing the grey-green cockpit in blood-coloured light.

“Crap!” Over the comms, she heard Kyle take a sharp, sudden breath; he’d always been averse to strong language (although compared to some of the words Catra had taught them, “crap” was very weak language indeed). “Scrapstorm. Shields holding, but the transport’s are pretty weak. Could be bad.”

“So pull out!” This was from Catra. “Don’t get your paint scratched saving the enemy. That’d be a waste of good paint.”

“They’re not here just for execution, Two. Command wouldn’t have shipped them here if the Prime couldn’t find a use for them. I’m going in.”

Fragments of metal disappeared in tiny flashes as they battered against Adora’s shields. Scrapstorms were a fact of life in long-occupied systems; any meaningfully sized ship tended to develop a bit of a magnetic imprint, and over a long period, that meant a shipwreck or significant piece of one became the eye of a hurricane of broken bits of metal – a Kesla cascade in miniature.

The broken hull of a long-dead ship loomed out of the scrapstorm like an iceberg.

In the light-headed, slow-motion way of people who think they’re about to die, Adora took in its shape. It had the lines of a Salinean vessel – a sleek overall design, like some ocean-going predator, studded with weapons blisters and sensor pods that seemed faintly reminiscent of seashells. In full flight, it would have been beautiful.

As it was, however, it was essentially a giant spike with a storm of damaged metal around it, and from its trajectory, it was going to plunge into the _Constrictor_.

Crap.

Moving with the speed of intense focus, Adora fed as much power as she could to the weaponry. The derelict was old, and a few careful shots should be able to make it come apart, hopefully sparing the transport.

This kind of situation had always been when she was at her best. She’d been trained, and trained well, to operate in crisis situations. She’d made Squadron Leader so soon after basic training because of it. 

She squeezed the trigger.

Green bolts of energy carved through space, eerily silent, and the derelict shattered like glass. Adora imagined that in an atmosphere, it would have made the loudest noise in the world. Somewhere between an iceberg calving and an explosion in a scrapyard.

A new alarm started up, and she noticed that in her moment of inattention, she’d missed a spear of metal travelling directly towards her, at speed. She tried to feed power back into the shields, but the capacitors weren’t holding; the Carnivore’s systems weren’t good at dealing with this kind of rapid shift in battlefield priorities, and from the looks of it, that was going to kill her.

“Fu-”

The metal passed through her depleted shields as if they simply weren’t there, and in a scream of tearing metal and a hiss of escaping atmosphere, the world went away.

* * *

The deck vibrated underfoot as Adora, very junior Horde cadet, made her way to the dormitories.

“Catra?”

“Shove off, Adora.” From the looks of it, Catra had built herself a nest in one of the beds.

“Shadow Weaver told me to get you.”

“Shadow Weaver can shove off too,” said Catra bitterly. “She hates me. She probably wants you to get me so she can throw me out of an airlock.”

“I’m gonna be right there with you. Nothing really bad can happen as long as we have each others’ backs, remember?”

Catra eyed her suspiciously from under the sheet, but she got up and took Adora’s hand. “All right. Let’s go and see the bitch, then.”

“Catra!”

“What?” said Catra defensively. “She is!”

“Maybe she’d like you better if you didn’t keep calling her things like that.”

“Maybe she’d like me better if you didn’t hog her attention!”

The conversation continued in this vein as they made their way to Shadow Weaver’s office. The lights were dim, as was standard, and Adora took a deep breath as she steeled herself – the sound mingling with Catra’s own rapid breathing.

“You wanted me to get Catra, ma’am?”

“You must find me, Adora.”

That wasn’t what Shadow Weaver had said. Nor had Shadow Weaver taken off her mask in the original event.

Shadow Weaver turned around…and Adora stepped back.

It wasn’t Shadow Weaver’s face. Monstrous though her mentor’s true features were, she was at least familiar with them.

Shadow Weaver’s skin was now a dull blue, instead of its usual grey-green. Her eyes were a piercing, ice-like blue, and her face was unmarred by any of the scars it usually bore.

“Adora.” Even the voice was different. “You are our only hope, Adora. Find the sword. Bring balance to the universe. Fight for the honour of Grayskull.”

* * *

Adora opened her eyes. Hmm, she still had eyes, that was probably a good sign. She could see out of them, that was even better. And the view before her looked like a ceiling, implying that she wasn’t in hard vacuum and about to die. Perfect.

After a few moments, every part of her body started to hurt at once, and she let out a muffled groan. So much for perfection.

After a few moments of pain, she began to put the pieces together. This looked like a standard pattern Horde prison infirmary, which would mean she was on one of the usual hospital bed designs for that. Which would mean…yeah, her wrists were trapped in the cuffs on the sides of the bed. Sometimes it sucked to be right.

“Hang on, I think she’s waking up,” said a voice from somewhere out of her line of sight, and two faces popped into view, set above the distinctive dull orange of Horde prison uniforms: a human male with dark eyes, skin and hair, and…

Well, she definitely wasn’t on a Horde-controlled vessel. The Horde tended not to give spaceborne roles to Plumerians; their natural physiology meant they were better suited to planetary jobs – agriculture, in particular. (Why the Plumerians themselves didn’t realise this, and indeed fielded their own navy, was a riddle for the ages.) 

The Plumerian in question was tall and willowy. Her skin was a woody brown, darker than her own and mottled with green dots that put Adora in mind of Catra’s freckles; Adora couldn’t see more than the edges, but she knew that there would be a layer of thicker, darker scales going down the back of her neck, coiling down onto her shoulders and back. Her irises were an ebony black, and there was a very faint amber tint to the whites. The most obvious sign of her heritage, though, was her hair – or, rather, the flowing mass of pale green vines that she had in place of hair. Hers were spotted with buds, and one or two had opened to reveal pink flowers.

The human’s voice was the one she’d heard just a moment ago. “You’re suffering from severe vacuum exposure. I don’t know why the Horde doesn’t give you closed flight suits, but if we hadn’t been able to get you aboard in time, you’d have died for sure. Your fighter’s in one of the hangars, but it’s, um, kind of in bits right now.” He rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. “Thanks for destroying that derelict; if it had hit us…well, I’m glad it didn’t hit us.”

Adora’s eyes narrowed as she studied him: undercut, large eyes, friendly smile. She could make out what looked like an archaic longbow on his back, apparently kludged together from scrap. “You’re a medic?”

“Kind of?” He shrugged. “I’m actually an engineer, but I did some first aid training, and we don’t have anyone better right now. Why?”

“I didn’t think you rebels _had_ medics.”

He looked at her oddly and said, “You…think we just leave our wounded to bleed out?”

“Yeah. Is that not how it works?”

Now they were both looking at her oddly, and the man with the bow said, “Okay. I’m going to go get Glimmer and DT; they’ll want to know she’s awake. Perfuma, keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn’t move too much.”

“Why?” said Adora. “Are you worried I’ll escape?”

“I’m worried you’ll hurt yourself!” He actually did look worried. “You’re lucky to even be alive after how long you were exposed!” The man shook his head. “Getting the others. Perfuma…you know what to do.”

With that, he was gone.

Adora wasn’t the best at judging ages, but she’d hazard a guess that the Plumerian couldn’t be older than her early twenties. She fixed the plant girl with a stern look. “So your job is to keep me from escaping?”

“Bow is trying to keep you from worsening your injuries,” said the Plumerian girl, her expression concerned.

“I’m not as injured as he thinks!”

Adora attempted a move that would have been an extremely dramatic and impressive escape if it had worked. Instead, her _everything_ caught fire at once, and she stayed right where she was.

“Um. Apart from maybe those injuries,” finished Adora lamely. She couldn’t show weakness to the enemy.

The Plumerian girl – Perfuma, the man had called her Perfuma – reached out a hand toward her, but stopped as she saw Adora’s involuntary flinch. “Please, calm down.”

* * *

It wasn’t too long before the door hissed open.

First into the room was an alien from a species Adora didn’t recognise. Green-skinned, golden-eyed, and with long, pale yellow hair, they were the first person Adora had seen so far here who wasn’t wearing a Horde prison uniform; rather, they were sporting a tight-fitting black and green catsuit that clung to their slender frame like paint to a starship’s hull. When they noticed Adora examining them, they grinned broadly, revealing razor-sharp teeth; Adora wasn’t proud that she couldn’t suppress her instinctive shudder.

Next was the dark-skinned man from earlier. Yes, he’d definitely scratch-built an archaic weapon for some reason.

They were followed through the door by…

Even Adora knew who this was. She’d seen pictures up for at least a year. The dreaded Commander Glimmer, Scourge of the Starways. The monstrous half-breed who had waged war against the Horde for some time. Her pink hair, shifting to feathers at the back, was unmistakable, and Adora had seen the distinctive purple patterns that adorned her tan skin so often on wanted posters she could have drawn them from memory. In her sleep.

Admittedly, there were also some details the posters hadn’t managed to convey very effectively. Such as that the Scourge of the Starways looked roughly twenty years old – about Adora’s age, by some coincidence. They also hadn’t done her justice; in particular, those gorgeous amethyst eyes…

Some part of Adora issued a mental sigh at that. Really, Adora? You’re inches from being tortured and thrown out of an airlock, and your first thought is _gee, the rebel captain has really pretty eyes?_

The eyes in question locked onto Adora like a sniper training sights on their target. “I’m told we have you to thank for taking out that derelict.” She gave a curt little bow. “Our thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” said Adora, aware that this wasn’t the best sentence to say angrily but going ahead anyway. “So what are you going to do to me?”

Her forehead wrinkled. “What are you expecting me to do?”

“Torture me, perhaps? Throw me out the airlock?”

The Scourge of the Starways seemed taken aback at that. “What? No! Of course not! Well…not _yet_ , anyway.” The dark-skinned man shot her a look. “I’m kidding, Bow! No, we’re not going to torture you or throw you out of any of the airlocks.”

“I wouldn’t take it off the table just yet, your highness,” said the green one, smirking. “She’s Horde, after all. You can’t trust her.”

“I can’t trust you either,” shot back Glimmer. “You made sure to tell me that when I hired you.”

“I would have had it printed on my business cards, but I didn’t have time,” they said sardonically, showing off those teeth again.

Bow coughed theatrically, and Glimmer refocused her eyes on Adora. “Double Trouble here isn’t wrong, though; you _are_ Horde, so we can’t just let you run around the ship. We’ll have a cell made up for you, and when we get back to the Free Territories, we can see about getting you a fair trial.”

* * *

It had been, by Adora’s estimate, a couple of days since they’d put her in this cell. She’d spent most of them in bed, drifting in and out of consciousness as her body recovered. Occasionally, the small, spherical repair drones that inhabited every Horde ship would skitter past, the familiar sound almost like a lullaby.

The rebels had been surprisingly generous to her – although it probably helped that this ship had been designed for rather more prisoners than just one, so they had plenty of blankets and the like. They’d also found a few objects that they’d stuck in the cell – books, mostly – presumably to keep her entertained during her all-too-brief interludes of consciousness.

It was starting to make her suspicious. Prisoners didn’t get this kind of treatment; prisoners were lucky to be fed. Were they going to try and flip her – turn her against the Horde? If so, then they were doomed to disappointment. She was loyal.

As she was doing a few test laps of the cell, her muscles finally feeling relatively good, she heard the distinctive hiss of the door opening. She turned around to see Glimmer at the door, studying her coldly. In the dim light of the cell, she could almost pass for human.

“Horde girl.” Glimmer’s voice was imperious. “Are you familiar with bomb disposal?”

“Uh…a little? Why?”

A cold smile spread across Glimmer’s face. “We’ve got a supply drop on the planet below, but we think the area’s been rigged with explosives, and our techs are still needed here for repairs. I’m willing to offer you a deal, Horde girl: come down with me and Mermista, help us deal with the surprises, and we’ll give you time out of your cell – and a share of the food, when we get the supplies and it stops being just these terrible ration bars.”

That part didn’t quite make sense to Adora. Ration bars _were_ food. Also, she couldn’t help but suspect this was part of some plot: were they going to try and bribe her into betraying the Horde? Were they going to try to kill her – no, if that was their goal they’d just take her out now. Still, there was definitely _something_ going on.

Still, the prospect of being allowed to move around the ship was tempting; she might be able to gather useful intel, or at the very least see the stars a few times.

“All right. You have a deal.”

“Good to hear. We’re a couple of hours out from Thaymor V; we’ll come and get you when we arrive.” She smiled coldly. “Try anything funny, though, and you’re dead.”

* * *

_We_ , it turned out, consisted of Glimmer and a woman from one of the more humanlike Salinean ethnicities, with brown skin and a moderate build. The whites of her eyes were closer to teal, and there were closed gills on her neck, but the most visibly alien feature was, again, her hair – or, rather, the tendrils that substituted for her hair. They were a dull blue-green colour, tipped with small bubbles that flickered with a sickly green light, and she had styled them into a much looser ponytail than Adora’s own.

She was also holding a trident in a way that indicated a worrying amount of familiarity, while Glimmer had a holster strapped to her hip – from the looks of it, she was carrying Adora’s own pistol. Additionally, there was a drone accompanying them: a spherical device about a foot across, scuttling on four insectile legs and, in general, armed with a stun weapon. 

“You ready, Horde girl?” said Glimmer, and Adora nodded. “Good. Come on, then; we’ve got work to do.”

None of them talked much as they filed into the hangar, which was almost empty, save for a couple of shuttles and…

Adora’s stomach actually twisted a little bit as she saw what had become of her Carnivore. One of the weapon pods was gone entirely, and the fighter as a whole was a tangled wreck. It was kind of amazing she’d made it out with all her limbs still attached; the Carnivore had been _mauled_.

She tore her eyes from it as they reached the first shuttle. Glimmer got into the pilot’s seat; Mermista sat near Adora in the back, trident in hand.

“Hope your guy’s reliable,” said Mermista, her voice almost emotionless, but with a dry edge that reminded Adora of Lonnie. “I think ration bars are, like, really bad for my complexion.”

“The Rebellion looks after her own, Mermista.”

“Yeah, remember, I’m, like, not in this for your revolution?” Adora’s eyes narrowed at this; could there be some advantage to be gained here? “I’m just here ‘cause we’re going the right way.” Okay, probably not.

* * *

Moving with incredible caution, Adora pulled out the red wire, and the bomb went dead. She breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay, this one’s done.” She extracted herself from under the sink and wiped the sweat off her forehead. “Just as well whoever planted these used Horde explosives; most of my training was on these.”

Glimmer’s expression, already less than happy, became slightly angrier, and Mermista said, “And would you, like, care to speculate on why they used Horde designs?”

“Salvaged them from a destroyed ship, maybe?”

“Or _maybe_ ,” said Glimmer tartly, “they used Horde bombs because they _were the Horde_!”

“The Horde wouldn’t do this-”

“The Horde has done _exactly this_ on a hundred worlds!” snapped the princess. “Bombing civilian targets, then rigging them to blow? If I had a lune for every time that’s happened I could hire every mercenary in the sector!”

“No,” said Adora. “No, you’re wrong. The Horde only wants to bring peace to the universe.”

“Kinda funny how it needs so many warships to bring peace!”

“Girls, girls, you’re both pretty,” deadpanned Mermista.

Glimmer pointed to the left. “If the Horde wasn’t attacking this place, then what’s _that_ doing there?!”

Adora couldn’t say anything. That was unmistakably a wrecked Horde Carnivore poking out of the ruins of that building. Even getting a Carnivore to _fly_ without a valid pilot code – the Horde really liked codes – was a bastard and a half; she’d seen Catra try while she was “grounded” for insubordination about two months back.

After a pregnant pause, Adora finally found something to say.

“Let’s just find your friends’ supplies and get out of here, shall we? No sense wasting time.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” said Glimmer darkly.

* * *

Adora snapped out of sleep as the door to her cell slid open, and she sat bolt upright to be greeted by the cold, black eye of her pistol. Behind it were the figures of Glimmer and Bow, plus several of the shipboard drones. Her muscles were still a little sore from dragging the supply cache back to the shuttle.

“Our nav-tech found a Horde tracking beacon on our ship, and they’ve got us surrounded,” said Glimmer, in a voice like frostbite. She armed the pistol; it made a clicking sound, followed by the hum of the power cells readying themselves. “I figure the most likely candidate to have planted it is also the loyal Horde scum, and that means you’re not going to live to greet them-”

Bow wrenched the gun out of her hands. “No, Glimmer. We’re not going to execute a prisoner without trial.” His eyes flickered to Adora. “Especially not one who was only captured because she tried to save us.”

“The Horde wouldn’t hesitate-”

“I’m sorry, I missed the part where we were the Horde now!” Bow fixed her with a glare. “What’s the point of fighting them if we’re just going to become the same thing?”

Glimmer made a noise of frustration that Adora couldn’t even have speculated on how to transcribe, and Bow turned to one of the drones. “Entrapta, where’s the homing beacon?”

Adora’s eyes bulged as the drone actually spoke. They weren’t supposed to do that. Its voice was high-pitched and slightly cracked, with a faint fuzz of distortion overlaying it.

It said, “Engineering section. Really clever design, too; I couldn’t even detect it until the signal pulse had been building up for hours.”

Bow turned back to Glimmer. “See? She hasn’t even been in engineering since she arrived! How could she possibly have planted it?”

Glimmer’s eyes were colder and harder than gemstones, but at least she wasn’t holding the gun any more. “All right, fine. We’ll leave her in here until we get out of immediate danger, or the Horde cut their way in. Bow, go see if you can shut down the beacon. Entrapta…evasive manoeuvres.”

The door hissed shut behind them, and Adora began doing some stretches. It wasn’t like she could contribute much to this engagement; all she could do was hope that the Horde didn’t blow them out of the sky.

About five minutes later, the ship began to shake under cannon impacts, and after a little bit, the lights went out. That would be a hit on a major power junction. Soon they’d be boarding.

* * *

The datacore clicked and thrummed as Adora cleared her throat to deliver the order. Now that debriefing had been finished and the _Constrictor_ was back in formation, she had been cleared to return to duty – at least, once there was actual duty for her to do. As it stood, it was time to do some study...but that wrecked Carnivore was still preying on her mind.

“Squadron Leader Adora, SP0P-19B5. Access code SR4TP0P. Engagement: Thaymor V.”

Out came the standard Horde post-battle documentation, the kind of thing she’d pored over a hundred times while training. It had exactly what she’d expected: a brief summary of the engagement, a few pictures of wrecked ships.

There, no mention of planted mines or civilian targets. That should have been it. She’d proved Glimmer wrong, hadn’t she? Hadn’t she?

Something deep inside told her to keep digging. She narrowed her eyes and pushed open the cubicle door. Typical Horde setup was a few small, silenced cubicles per dorm, the better to keep ID codes secret, and she knew Catra was taking care of her weapon collection in the dorm outside.

“Hey Catra, what’s Shadow Weaver’s code?” 

Catra’s eyes widened. “How would I know that, Adora?” she said, in the too-innocent voice she usually used when she was guilty as sin.

“Right, of course, you never got Shadow Weaver’s code,” said Adora sardonically. “I’ll just have to enter random numbers and letters until I find it. Hopefully that won’t set off an alarm.”

Both of them knew full well that the Horde was very unforgiving when it came to incorrect codes. Catra sighed. “Well, if you’re going to try random combinations, make sure you don’t enter L1ND4GR4Y. This month’s code definitely isn’t that.” Catra seemed to take it as a personal challenge to keep her knowledge of everyone’s codes up-to-date; if she spent that energy on the things she was actually supposed to be doing, she’d probably be a Squadron Leader by now. She mostly used them to play pranks: deleting Lonnie’s files had been a standout, as had filing a bunch of very embarrassing search requests for Adora.

“Gotcha. Thanks, Catra. I’ll be sure not to use it.”

“Good. ‘Cause I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble – at least not without me on hand.” The corners of her mouth quirked upwards in a smile. “Gotta watch each other’s backs, right?”

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to cause any problems.”

“I’ll prep the escape pods,” said Catra, the smile transitioning to a mischievous grin, and Adora shot her a dirty look before closing the door.

Back at the datacore, Adora cleared her throat and put as much contralto into her voice as she could muster. “Commodore Shadow Weaver, L0UR-41N3. Access code L1ND4GR4Y. Engagement: Thaymor V.”

A rather longer document appeared on screen.

As Adora read through it, her gut began to writhe. It was all here. The mines planted in the buildings _had_ been on Horde command, punishment for the locals’ support for the rebels. The attacks hadn’t all been on military outposts, either; civilians had been deemed legitimate targets, as standard.

“As standard” was the worst part. If this had just been an isolated decision by a Force Captain on the ground, it would have been, okay, _bad_ , but it would have been an individual issue – a bad person, who could be withdrawn from command. “As standard” meant it wasn’t isolated. It meant most commanders were doing it, or even that it was part of the Force Captain training. It was a systemic thing that couldn’t be fixed by taking Leech or Mantenna or whoever aside and giving them a talking-to; it was _how things worked_ in the Horde, and she’d just never been told.

“As standard” meant the system as a whole was broken.

Suddenly, Adora was very glad they hadn’t been assigned to the Elberon front yet. She felt a little nauseous at the thought: being given a ground target, diving in for the attack run…and killing people who couldn’t fight back.

She keyed in a few commands. She knew what needed to be done…but it was going to be so much easier with the right backup. Orders that she be given access to the _Constrictor_ , in Shadow Weaver’s name. Easy. Prison ships were generally lightly manned, relying on the drones to enforce order, and she already knew how to solve that one.

That made her wonder about Catra. On the one hand, Catra hated it here, and she enjoyed screwing with people. She’d probably be up to tag along. On the other hand…she had to be honest, this was probably going to fail, and she didn’t want to get Catra either punished or, worse, vaporised in some reckless escape plan.

She couldn’t let that happen. Catra wasn’t going to be happy, she knew…but Catra was pretty tough. She should be fine in the long run.

Suppressing the shudder in her stomach, she logged out and opened the door again.

“Hey, Catra? I gotta go take care of something. It shouldn’t take me too long.” She had to make this not sound suspicious. “Wanna come with?”

Her friend thought for a moment. “Nah, you go ahead. I gotta check up on some stuff on the datacore myself.”

Well that was almost certainly a lie; if Catra was planning to do anything in the datacore room, it was sealing the door – Adora still didn’t know how she did that – and taking a nap in peace, the soundproofing shielding her from interruption.

“Don’t sleep through any alarms,” said Adora, grinning cheekily, and Catra rolled her eyes.

* * *

A few key-presses, and the door slid open, revealing a bulky metal sarcophagus – a full-body restraint. The design usually exposed the face, but this one was also adorned with a metal navigator’s mask, its single flat “eye” gazing out emotionlessly. A faint mechanical noise echoed in the sudden silence, putting her teeth on edge, but Adora couldn’t tell what was making it.

“You’re Entrapta, right?” said Adora, fighting to keep her hand away from the pistol.

The visor flickered. “Yeah! And you’re the girl who was arguing with Glimmer earlier!” Entrapta thought for a moment. “Did you wanna talk about something? People don’t come in here often. 

“I need your help – and the others do too. You can control the drones, right?”

“Nope!”

Adora’s stomach dropped through the floor. “But you were controlling one earlier-”

“Common misconception! Actually, Emily was controlling the drone. Emily’s the ship’s computer, she really wanted a name. I can connect up and ask Emily to help me out, but she’s the one who controls the drones.”

Now for the most important question. “Can you connect to it – uh, her from nearby?”

Somehow, she could tell that Entrapta was smiling under the mask. “Just get me out of these restraints and I can do it from the corridor.”

The sound of Adora hurriedly typing in Shadow Weaver’s access code echoed through the room, and after a few seconds, the metal sarcophagus at its heart burst open to reveal a humanoid form, wrapped in more layers of metal.

Adora could not even begin to hazard a guess at Entrapta’s species. She was humanoid, definitely, but a lot of species were humanoid – Plumerians and Salineans were just the beginning. Adora couldn’t even guess from her hair, because Entrapta didn’t have any – instead, a mess of jointed metal tendrils extended from either side of her head, and from the looks of it, they were strong enough for her to walk on.

“Hey, what’s going on here?” barked a voice from the door, any distinguishing elements sanded off by the filters on a Horde rebreather helmet, and Adora froze. She hadn’t expected the guards to find them this soon. “Squadron Leader, what are you doing here?”

She turned around. There were two of them, in full armour and holding stun prods; one had a jagged red rank marking painted on one shoulder. “I, uh. Needed to get this prisoner for Shadow Weaver. Her special request.”

There was a momentary pause, and then the higher ranked guard said, his voice chiding, “You should’ve got us, Squadron Leader. That’s SOP.” He nodded to his offsider. “Call it in. We’ll escort you to-”

“Actually,” said Adora, bringing her own stun prod down on his head, “you don’t need to worry.”

In the split second while the other guard processed this, Entrapta scooped him up in her mecha-hair and threw him against the wall. He left a dent. “This is so exciting!” said the navigator, her visor seemingly twinkling with glee. “Last time I didn’t do any of this part myself!”

“What happened last time?” escaped Adora’s lips before she could shut it down.

“Oh, well, Double Trouble let me out when most of the guards were already down. Then they shoved me into the thing and had me pilot! That’s when I met Emily. She’s really nice, you’d probably like her-”

Adora took a deep breath. “Everyone needs you to focus now, okay, Entrapta? Breathe. Now could you plug in and ask Emily to knock out the guards? We’re going to need to get going fairly quickly.”

“No problem!” Some of the tendrils, writhing like snakes, pulled off the front of a console set into the corridor wall and slid into the now-exposed systems. The lights went red. “Emily’s got our backs! I don’t think she was happy after the Horde unplugged me. Shhh, Emily, sweetie. In just a bit I’ll be back in my socket and everything’s gonna be OK, I promise.”

Adora stepped back. “I’ll…go round the guards up; you head straight to the bridge as soon as it’s safe. The Horde will probably figure out that something’s wrong before long, and we’ll have to make a swift exit.”

* * *

The running lights aboard the _Fright Zone_ went red, and the scramble alarm sounded, pulling Catra out of a very nice dream in which Adora was…well, that wasn’t important right now. Or possibly ever.

She pulled on her gear quickly – holster, headset, comms – and headed for the hangar bay along corridors dyed the shade of old blood by the emergency lights.

She tapped the badge. “Adora? You got any idea what’s going on? …Adora?”

(Catra’s voice echoed through a deserted corridor on the _Constrictor_ , unnoticed by anyone except the scuttling drones.)

With a mental shrug, Catra headed for the muster point outside their hangar. Adora would probably be there.

* * *

Adora was not there.

“Catra,” said Lonnie coolly. “Where the hell’s Adora?”

Catra kept her voice level, but her eyes shot daggers. “What do you think I am – her keeper? I’ll be substitute leader if she doesn’t show up before we get going.” 

_Come on, Adora, where are you? Not like you to miss the fun._

“Sorry,” said Lonnie, “ _you’ll_ be substitute leader? You ain’t our leader, Catra. You’re only as high up as you are ‘cause you’ve got the reflexes-”

There was a horrible screeching sound as Catra’s claws dug into the corridor wall. “Which is more than you have, Lonnie! I’ll say it again in case you weren’t listening: _I’ll. Be. Substitute. Leader._ ”

Lonnie’s eyes flicked to the scars Catra had carved into the metal. “Right. Sure thing…One.”

Catra’s voice was little more than a snarl. “And don’t you forget it.”

* * *

When Adora reached the bridge, wiping the sweat from her brow, everyone else was already there: Mermista and Perfuma off to one side, and Glimmer, Double Trouble, Entrapta and Bow in the centre.

At the sight of her, Glimmer did a double-take. Behind her, Entrapta laid a hand on the navigation hub – a silver-grey globe, large enough for her to fit inside with remarkable comfort – and slipped in as it opened. Within it, she’d be plugging herself into the computer, syncing up to it – her, Adora reminded herself. The _Constrictor_ ’s computer had a name.

The Scourge of the Starways glared at Adora, her face like a thundercloud. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Letting you out of prison!” snapped Adora. “Can we talk about it after we get out of here, though? I’d like to be clear of their gun batteries before we have a shouting match!”

“We’re getting underway,” said a nearby drone in Entrapta’s voice.

The ship rocked. None of the Horde ships had a clear firing solution, at least not yet, but their speculative fire was worryingly close.

“Entrapta!” shouted Glimmer. “Get the jump drive online and give me some evasive manoeuvres!”

“We’re doing the best we can! Emily isn’t really programmed for this, though, and I’m not much of a pilot!”

“Not much of a-” Glimmer buried her face in her hand in frustration. “Entrapta, your literal job is piloting!”

“No, it’s navigating! That’s not the same thing!”

“Let me take the manual controls,” said Adora. “My best Academy marks were in piloting, and while I’m _better_ in a Carnivore, I should be able to get this thing to safety.”

Glimmer was almost levitating with anger by the time Adora finished speaking. “If you think we’d trust you to fly our ship after you-”

“After she _what_ , Glimmer?” interrupted Bow. “After she saved our lives – _twice_? After she didn’t plant the tracker that got us caught? After she helped you sweep that settlement for mines? Has she done _anything_ apart from wear that uniform that’s actually hurt us?”

Glimmer’s jaw tightened, but she nodded. “Okay, okay, Bow. You’ve made your point.” She executed a moderately sarcastic curtsy, its effect somewhat spoiled by the prison uniform. “The controls are yours, Horde girl; _impress me_.”

Adora grabbed the controls and opened up the throttle. This was going to be interesting.

* * *

Catra’s jaw dropped as the prison transport executed a diving turn that would have been hard for a pilot on a much smaller vessel, then started weaving between barrages of gunfire from the larger ships with a virtuosity that had been completely absent from their earlier flight. The first escape had been successful more because nobody had expected them to run than because of any particular skill; this time, they were the target of three separate capital ships and so far had sustained only minor burns from the edges of energy blasts. None of the rebels had shown the skill and/or insanity to fly like that earlier.

Only one pilot she knew would be skilled and/or insane enough to do that, in fact.

 _No, that’s crazy talk_ , she told herself. _Why would Adora be flying an escaping ship? Sure, she’s been a bit weird since she got back…and she wanted Shadow Weaver’s codes, for the first time ever…_

“Oh, shit.”

“Somethin’ the matter, One?” said Lonnie, and Catra snapped out of it.

“Nearly got my paint scorched by one of those shots,” lied Catra smoothly. “We’re gonna need to take this easy; their pilot’s been at the crazy pills, and we’re already short one fighter; I don’t wanna have to fill out any paperwork if one of you lot gets wiped. Especially you, Thr – uh, Two; I don’t like you enough to want to spend six hours writing down your favourite hat for the Prime’s post-mortem records.”

“Gotcha, One. Three, Four, get on their six.”

Rogelio contributed a hissing, growling noise, and Lonnie shot back, “I don’t care if their six keeps turnin’ into a nine! I don’t care if it keeps turnin’ into a fourteen! Follow that ship-”

The _Constrictor_ ’s jump drives flared to life, and it was gone.

Catra scowled. “All pilots, head back to the _Fright Zone_. This chase just went above our pay grade.”

“Hang on.” Kyle’s voice had a near-perpetual tremble to it. “You guys get paid?” 

“Not yet, Three,” said Catra, in her best imitation of patience. “That’s why it’s above our pay grade.”

“Oh.”

“I dunno where the Horde gets people like you, Three,” cut in Lonnie, “but I’d consider it a personal favour if they stopped.”

“Cut the chatter, Two,” said Catra, her mind racing. Adora had abandoned her. That was probably going to hurt, a lot, when she’d had time to process it, but for the moment…for the moment she was just numb.

Her hands tightened on the controls, as if she was trying to choke the life from them.

* * *

Mermista, her face sour, shoved a banknote into the waiting hand of Double Trouble. “I, like, really need to stop taking bets where if I win I don’t get to collect because we’re dead.”

“Probably, darling,” said the mercenary, “but where would the fun in that be?”

The distinctive click-hum of a pistol charging sounded, and from behind them, Glimmer said, “By the way, I think I’ve figured out who planted the tracker earlier.”

Double Trouble’s face was the very archetype of injured innocence. “Why, your highness, whyever would you suspect me?”

“Because you told me ahead of time that you weren’t trustworthy,” said Glimmer. “It was a bit of a hint.”

There was a brief pause, and then Double Trouble nodded. “I would have liked to have a more interesting plan than simply placing a tracker, but there simply wasn’t time. The Horde made a very impressive offer.”

“You betrayed us,” said Glimmer levelly.

“You paid me to help break you out of prison, your highness. Keeping you free after that was never specified.”

“In the Horde,” said Adora carefully, “this kind of stunt would easily earn you an airlocking.”

“We’re not the Horde, remember?” said Glimmer, and Bow smiled tightly. “I haven’t thrown anyone out of an airlock, and I’m not sure I want to start now.”

“Wait, never?” Adora boggled momentarily. “The Horde says you do it all the time. It’s why they call you the Scourge of the Starways.”

Glimmer burst out laughing. “Wait, they seriously call me the Scourge of the – Ooh, I like that. I should get stationery made up.” She raised her free hand in an expansive gesture. ‘From the Desk of Commander Glimmer, Princess of Brightmoon and Scourge of the Starways’.” She took a deep breath and glared at Double Trouble. “I want you off this ship at our next stop.”

The mercenary executed a florid bow. “Of course, your highness.”

There was a beeping noise from one of the drones, and it asked, in Entrapta’s voice, “And…where would you like our next stop to be, exactly?”

Glimmer thought for a moment. “Head for the Tobis outer system. That shouldn’t be too far off, and we can hide in the Scar while we figure out what to do next.”

The deck beneath Adora’s feet shuddered as the jump engines repositioned and flared.

* * *

The Scar was a huge asteroid belt, formed when one of the outer planets of the Tobis system had shattered a few hundred years ago. Unusually dense for an asteroid belt, it was an ideal place for the _Constrictor_ to take shelter: it had a lot of sensor noise that would make them hard to detect, and they could use the rocks as cover if they did need to run.

It also gave the mess room, one of the few places on the ship that _did_ have a decently sized window, a very interesting view.

“Hey. Horde girl.”

Adora blinked as she came back to reality. She’d been just sitting, taking in the view and not really processing anything, for she wasn’t sure how long. She turned to look at Glimmer, who had approached while Adora was distracted. The rebel leader was carrying a tray of…Adora had no idea what was in the tray, actually. “Did you want something?”

The Scourge of the Starways, the monstrous half-breed who had caused the Horde so much trouble, looked down. “I wanted to make sure you had something to eat…and to apologise. You saved our asses – three times, so far – and I never even asked your name.”

“Adora.”

“Adora,” repeated Glimmer, nodding as she set the tray down next to Adora. “I’m sorry I was so hostile. Truce?”

“Truce.” Adora poked at the contents of the tray with a fork. “This is food?”

“Be nice,” said Glimmer, without rancour. “Perfuma’s doing the best she can with what we’ve got. We’ve only got so many supplies, after all; that cache you helped us get back has to last us a while.”

“No, I mean…why isn’t it bar-shaped?”

Glimmer stared at her for a few seconds, and then buried her face in her hands. “Just…just give it a try, okay?”

Slowly, hesitantly, Adora took a small bite, chewing it with the same caution she’d used while defusing bombs on Thaymor V.

Ten seconds later, she began shovelling the stuff into her mouth like she was afraid it was going to run away from her.

“What _is_ this?” she said, with her mouth full. “And is there more?”

“Perfuma says she used a few things from the supplies to flavour some ration bars. With the stockpiles this ship had, and the size of our crew, we have more than we’re going to be able to eat in weeks.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, and then Glimmer said, “So what do you think you’ll do now? I assume you’re not planning on going back to the Horde.”

Adora swallowed her last mouthful of food. “Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve never really known anything but the Horde…and it looks like I didn’t know the Horde that well, either.”

“You could…come with us, if you want.” Glimmer reached out, as if to lay her hand on Adora’s shoulder, but lowered her arm again as she saw Adora’s response. “Sorry. I just mean, we have so few people, and none of us are exactly pilots. We could really use your help. If you decide you want to leave later, no-one will stand in your way.” 

Adora thought for a moment. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like to come with you.” 

Her stomach clenched, a little bit…

 _You should have told Catra_ , said part of her. _Now she’s stuck with the Horde, and she probably thinks you’ve betrayed her…_

“Awesome! Just one thing we gotta take care of first,” said Glimmer, apparently oblivious to Adora’s unease. Somehow, her eyes were actually twinkling. “We gotta get you a makeover, girl.”

“A what now?”


	2. Dress Reversal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adora, Glimmer and Bow attempt a supply run. Emphasis on "attempt".

The twin moons of Tobis Tertius hung in the sky. The larger was a rich, kyanite blue, the other a sickly, sulphurous shade of yellow.

Their light shone down on the sparsely populated nocturnal streets of Jaka City, gleaming dully off the gunmetal armour of Horde soldiers and the drab grey of the synthcrete buildings they patrolled, and rather less dully off the new-fallen snow that crunched underfoot. Ancient Tobian traditions held that the moons were the eyes of an ever-watchful goddess, whose nocturnal vigil would protect the innocent from evil.

If this goddess existed, she might find her attention piqued by a trio of Horde soldiers moving through the narrow streets of the city. Unlike the other soldiers, who marched with the clockwork precision of military drill, these three were somewhat out of step: one had the march down, but the others were clearly struggling.

The trio rounded a corner, and then ducked into an alleyway, where one of them reached up and released the clasps holding on their helmet, removing it to reveal a dark-skinned face, topped off with blue-black hair styled in an undercut.

Bow gulped down the freezing air like it was going out of style and muttered, “I can’t breathe in this thing.”

“At least yours fits,” said Glimmer darkly from inside her own salvaged armour. “This starsdamned thing keeps pressing up against my back, and it’s _really_ starting to piss me off.”

Bow rubbed his chin. “Kinda wish we could have kept Double Trouble around-”

Double Trouble’s exit from the ship had nearly given Adora a heart attack. Her Horde education had never mentioned shapeshifters.

“They’d just sell us out to the Horde again.” Glimmer’s voice was grim. “Frankly, I’m surprised they already haven’t; I gave them a little extra as hush money, but I don’t wanna bet on it buying loyalty.”

Adora held a finger up to silence them and poked her head around the corner. “We’re clear, but get your helmet back on. I can’t see around corners, and we want to get in and get out without setting off any alerts.”

They moved out.

Sure enough, after about fifty feet, another patrol emerged from around a corner. Their leader had the same jagged red rank insignia that had been given to Adora by mutual agreement; as the only one with real familiarity with the Horde, she was rated most likely to not get them all killed in some shoot-out with local law enforcement.

“Don’t recognise you lot,” said their leader, her voice harsh. “ID code?”

“Adora. SP0P-19B5.”

Dread hovered in the air for a frozen moment, as Adora desperately hoped that her code hadn’t been flagged yet, and then the leader nodded. “Acknowledged. Lynda, 4N1L-LSKR. Don’t remember you on the patrol schedule.”

“Commander ordered us out. Wanted us to check on something in the mercantile district. Probably nothing, but orders are orders.”

Lynda gave a short, mocking laugh. “Sounds like the commander, all right. Wish one of the Primes or someone would show up, rein him in – yeah, it’s great that he wants to make sure the tax revenue is good and the place is orderly, but it’s just a waste of time to chase down every punk kid who spray-paints their genitals in the alley behind a crappy restaurant.”

“I hear you,” said Adora. “Hopefully, we can get this over with quickly and head back where it’s warm.”

“You think the base is warm?” said Lynda, her voice suddenly suspicious. “Heater’s been on the blink for weeks.”

Oops. If they’d been made, this could get very bad, very quickly. Adora’s hand started to creep toward her stun prod…

“It’s warmer than this, at least,” cut in Bow, only the faintest hint of stress detectable in his voice. “The wind is just…” His armour plates clattered against each other as he shivered. “You’d think they could make armour that kept it out a little better.”

“Guess the techs are too busy working on those new fighters they’ve been talking about for two years now,” Lynda said bitterly. “Good luck.”

“You too,” replied Adora.

Adora’s sigh, as soon as Lynda was out of earshot, was somehow the loudest thing Glimmer had ever heard. “That was too close. Good thing my codes are still valid.”

* * *

The goddess of the moons may or may not have been watching them, but a much less divine figure absolutely was. A slender figure, shivering slightly in the chill of the night, craned its head over the parapets framing a nearby roof, studying the interaction, ears pricked up.

Teeth glinted in the moonlight as the figure moved to follow the legitimate patrol.

This could be extremely interesting.

* * *

“Okay,” said Glimmer decisively, as they entered into the main square of what looked like the mercantile district. “We need supplies, weapons, clothes that aren’t Horde uniforms. We have no money, and Tobis isn’t a great spot for starting a rebellion because it’s so close to a portal gate, so I propose we steal some stuff.”

“I’m not sure how comfortable I am with that,” said Bow uneasily.

“We already stole a ship!” protested Glimmer.

“Yeah, off the people who held us prisoner! I’m not so keen on robbing innocent people.”

Glimmer thought for a moment. “Okay, so now we need a foolproof way of determining guilt or innocence, at night, while freezing.” She raised her voice. “O gods of the moons! I pray to thee, bless this pistol with the power to only harm the guilty!”

The click-hum of Adora’s pistol charging sounded extremely loud in the night air, even over the wind.

 _Not that one,_ said Adora’s mind, in a voice that was vaguely familiar but definitely did not belong to her. _Thirty degrees to the left._

On an impulse Adora couldn’t explain, she bumped Glimmer’s shoulder, and the shot ploughed into the back wall of the wrong building and set off an alarm. Glimmer glared at her for a few moments, before shrugging and blasting a nearby power junction; the alarm died instantly. “Good a target as any other. Come on, let’s go take a look at the prize inside.”

As they entered through the rough-edged hole, Adora suddenly realised where she’d heard the voice before.

It had been in her dream before waking up in the _Constrictor_ ’s hospital.

* * *

At the mouth of the alleyway, Lynda (Horde ID code 4N1L-LSKR) paused. “You guys heard something in there too, right?”

The other two members of the squad exuded an air of agreement, and Lynda raised her scanner. “I’m picking up one lifesign, but it’s…weird; might be a ghost image. I’m gonna go check, see what it is.” She vanished into the darkness.

There was a thud, a clatter, and after a few seconds, she emerged back into the light and said, “Nothing there but a couple of feral skitlets. Temperatures must be screwing with the scanners. We should get…hang on.” She held up a hand to one ear. “Command channel. New orders: we’re to rendezvous with an incoming transport at the spaceport. Guess there wasn’t anyone else on hand.”

The squad headed towards the spaceport, where the easily recognisable shape of a Horde prison transport was descending, its chunky central hull and small manoeuvring outriggers visible as a shadow within the light. It clearly hadn’t been in atmosphere long; its shields glowed with air friction, giving the impression that a third, redder moon had appeared from nowhere.

In the alleyway behind them, the heap of trash in one of the dumpsters made a scraping, groaning sound as it settled, adjusting to the weight of the unconscious figure in Horde patrol armour that had been added moments previously.

* * *

Adora boggled a little bit at the sight laid out before her. Even in the dim light, filtered through the helmet, it was still overwhelming. She’d never _seen_ so many colours.

The building itself was predominantly an austere off-white, full of graceful curves and slick ornamentation, seemingly designed to put as much focus as possible on the merchandise – clothes in hues Adora hadn’t even known _existed_ until right this second. It was like finding some sort of alien bazaar on the _Fright Zone_ ’s flight deck.

She could tell that Glimmer was looking at her quizzically through her visor. “Do you need a moment?”

“Yeah, sorry, I just…” Adora gestured vaguely at the racks around her and continued, “Do people outside the Horde really wear all of these clothes?”

“Not everyone, but…yeah, people own all sorts of different things, even…” Glimmer reached out and lifted a garment from the rack with the air of one picking up a dead mouse for disposal. It was an eye-watering mess of the exact worst possible primary colour shades. “…even things like this that they really shouldn’t. I…had more than a lot of people did, but most people have at least a few. Did the Horde really not give you _any_ kind of choice?”

“You saw the lockers on the _Constrictor_ , Glimmer. Did you see _any_ clothes that weren’t Horde uniforms?”

“I suppose not,” she admitted. “Come on; get looting.”

Bow spoke up. “I’m still not on board with this.”

“What if we promise to give them freedom from the Horde at the end?” said Glimmer. “That should be worth a few armfuls of insured goods, right?”

Bow gave her a very old-fashioned look, and then his eyes widened. “Hang on.” He walked past Glimmer and Adora to poke at a seemingly innocuous chunk of wall…

…and it swung slowly open, revealing a staircase.

“It was a little open already,” said Bow awkwardly. “I don’t know what’s down there.”

“Let’s go look!” proclaimed Glimmer, pointing dramatically into the hole.

Adora coughed awkwardly. “Is that…not supposed to be there?”

“It’s not standard, no.” Glimmer thought for a moment. “Well, not in clothing stores, anyway. I’ve heard there’s a furniture chain over in Geluregnus-” She shook her head. “I’ll explain later. Come on!”

She grabbed Adora by the wrist and dragged her into the stairwell.

* * *

The alien fractals of jumpspace faded back into the glitter of distant stars, and the _Fright Zone_ emerged into the Tobis system like a whale breaching the surface.

Catra paced in front of the docking bay, quietly seething. If Adora had materialised in front of her, she might well have strangled her friend. Her _former_ friend.

Lonnie coughed, and Catra barely restrained herself from lashing out. The other girl raised an eyebrow at her; Catra could only envy her that particular knack. “Stressed out?”

“They got away from us twice,” snarled Catra. It wasn’t _all_ the truth, but there was at least _enough_ truth there to qualify. “I’m getting a little sick of being outflown by a _prison transport_. A decent ship, at least we’d have an excuse.”

“Unfortunately, we’re not gonna have a chance.” Lonnie had never exactly been the squadron’s most tactful member. “Command wants us on the ground. Apparently they think it’s landed, so they want as many eyes as they can get in the city…and they don’t all have to be the same colour.”

‘Command’, on the _Fright Zone_ , meant Shadow Weaver; the captain was such a nonentity that most of the crew didn’t even know his name. It was a running joke among the grunts that he’d actually died and Shadow Weaver just hadn’t gotten around to reporting it.

Catra decided to let the barb about her eyes slide. When she’d got this whole mess figured out, however that went, she’d make sure to pay Lonnie back…but the time for that was not yet, and there were other, greater hurts to avenge.

“Fine,” she managed. “Let’s head for the shuttles, then.”

“Ain’t all bad, at least – they’re givin’ us some new weapons when we land.”

* * *

After a few moments, Adora’s brain switched back on and she snatched her wrist out of Glimmer’s grip.

The room at the bottom of the stairs was not like the austere, off-white room they had just left. It was dark, dingy and ill-maintained, the metal walls covered in a grimy green patina. Small boxes marked with Horde insignia – the largest ones were about the size of a stool – lay around the place, stacked in rough piles.

“Nicely done, Bow!” said Glimmer. “You’ve found some kind of…secret Horde storage area?”

“Why would the Horde hide this?” said Adora, realising after a few moments that she had done so out loud. Oh well, might as well commit. “The Horde controls this planet. If they wanted to build a storage area, they could just put it in one of their bases. And Tobis Tertius is pretty cold for a habitable planet; if they really need to keep something secret, there should be miles and miles of frozen wasteland to put it in.”

Glimmer rubbed her chin, the metal of her gloves scraping against her helmet, and said, “What’s in the boxes? Because if this is all food or weaponry, we might have stumbled on a resistance cell – in which case we might have allies.”

Bow pulled a small multitool out of his belt and pried open one of the boxes, before reaching in and extracting…

Adora had no idea what Bow was now holding up to the dim light. It appeared to be a violet crystal, inscribed with some symbol that Adora couldn’t understand.

Eyeing it carefully, Bow said, “First Ones tech. I don’t know much of the language, but I think it says either ‘loved’ or ‘lunch’.”

There was a clattering sound from the top of the stairs, and Adora, reflexes trained by years of Horde drills, was the first to react. With a hiss of, “Take cover!” she grabbed Bow and Glimmer by the arms and dragged them behind the largest stack of boxes.

“I don’t like this, Scurvy,” came a voice from up the stairwell – thin and reedy, underlaid by a grinding sound. “There’s a Horde transport at the spaceport, a carrier just entered the system, and now our front has a big ol’ hole in the wall – are you sure he’s reliable?”

“Look, Theydon, we’ve made good money off this deal.” The second speaker’s voice was a fair bit deeper than the first. “If you wanna bail now, you’ll miss out on payday for this lot.”

The reedy voice considered this. “Okay, Scurv, I’ll-”

A clang echoed through the space. “I told you not to call me Scurv,” said the deep voice. “Might be an idea to start loading stuff into the transport, though; power grid’s down in this sector, so it can’t be long before we start dealing with snoops.”

Behind the boxes, Adora nudged Bow and whispered, “What’s going on?”

“I think they’re smugglers,” Bow whispered back. “Sounds like someone in the Horde is buying First One tech in bulk?”

“First what?”

“First Ones. You know, the lost empire that disappeared a thousand years ago and left ruins full of stuff like this.” He pressed the crystal into Adora’s hand.

The crystal released a low, synthetic chime and began to glow.

Bow made a strangled sound of shock and panic, which was swiftly drowned out by a chorus of similar chimes, starting with the boxes closest to them and spreading through the room.

“I think someone’s down here with us, Scurvy!” said the reedy voice.

Adora hastily dug through her vocabulary for the most appropriate response.

“Crap.”

That was probably not it.

* * *

Lynda picked up the first crate, the Horde bat-wing proudly stamped on its metal exterior. “New orders: some of these are to go to the transport that just arrived. Verification: Lynda, 4N1L-LSKR.”

The docking officer nodded and said, “Docking bay ninety-four. Over that way.”

“Uh, ma’am?” This was from one of the soldiers in Lynda’s patrol. “It’s not standard policy to put the heavy stuff on prison transports.”

“Yes, which is why these are _new_ orders, not old orders,” she snapped. “Here, get this to the docking bay before I put you on report.”

He grunted as he struggled to manage the crate that had just been pressed into his hands. She tilted her head at him quizzically. “It’s not even that heavy. You’ve been skipping exercise, haven’t you?”

All the soldier could muster was a wheeze.

Lynda groaned under her breath. “You, give him a hand with it. Come on, we don’t have all night.”

* * *

As Adora’s mind raced, frantically trying to come up with some way out of this, Glimmer took the initiative and kicked the pile of boxes over. It toppled over in slow motion, or so it seemed to Adora, accompanied by a noise like a transport full of scrap undergoing a very messy crash landing. One of them, awkwardly balanced on the corner of the pile, split open as it hit the ground, spraying glowing crystalline devices across the floor.

The move caught the two speakers off guard. The one on the left, a man with dark skin and a beard, was reaching for his gun; the one on the right – a cyborg with prominent wheels in his leg prostheses – tried to catch one of the boxes and took a hard blow to the shin, adding a clanging sound to the din.

In the confusion, the three bolted, Adora stuffing the crystal into a belt compartment to keep it safe. Glimmer, bringing up the rear, whipped out Adora’s pistol and fired blindly, causing one of the boxes to explode in a shower of sparks.

When she reached the top of the stairs, Adora could see a parked vehicle through the hole they’d left in the wall – some sort of light transport skimmer. The rear had a couple of seats and a small storage bay; the front was narrower, little more than a saddle, handlebars and a small windshield. “Head for the skimmer!”

“Wait!” shouted Glimmer. “Grab some clothes!”

Surprisingly smoothly, Adora and Glimmer pulled a random rack out of its socket and held it aloft as they ran for the exit, pitching it into the storage bay on the skimmer in a single flowing motion. Bow, multitool in hand, fiddled with the controls before turning to Adora. “I’ve unlocked it; can you fly one of these things?”

“Probably?” Adora slid into the seat and started the activation sequence. “It doesn’t look too different from a gravcycle, and I did the training on that.”

Swearing and the sound of guns charging from inside the shop told them all it was time to get going, so Bow and Glimmer dove for the back seats and pulled on harnesses. Adora carefully guided it off the ground-

“Screw you!” yelled the reedy voice from behind them as Adora raised the skimmer for their getaway. “Trying to pinch our skimmer? You’re gonna find out why they call me Dragstor!”

Glimmer pulled off her helmet, dropping it to the ground below, and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Is it because you lost a bet?”

“Shut up!”

Adora slammed down on the accelerator, and Bow began screaming as the skimmer tore through the night sky. So much for getting in and out without setting any alerts; she was pretty sure that Horde enforcement skimmers were already taking off.

In the rear-view, she could see Glimmer’s face. The Scourge of the Starways was grinning broadly, as if this was the best fun she’d had in years.

Far behind was a falling star, but one with purpose – a ship entering the atmosphere. A small one, by the look of it – a shuttle of some kind.

* * *

Adora had been right about the alerts. Within a minute, their skimmer had picked up a comet’s tail of Horde skimmers: sharp-nosed, heavily armed, and outfitted with prominent dorsal stabiliser fins.

“Unidentified skimmer,” blared a voice on open comms, “you are in violation of transport ordinances. Come to a halt and submit yourself for processing.”

Adora’s answer was to push the accelerator as hard as it would go. If they were taken, Glimmer, Bow, and probably the others on the ship would be heading right back to BST-ILN; Adora…honestly, Adora didn’t actually know what the punishment for desertion was, but it was probably pretty bad.

The downside to violating the local ordinances was, as was standard in Horde territory, that they were enforced with local ordnance. The first blast only qualified as a warning shot because Adora rolled slightly to the left; if she’d kept a constant bearing, she likely would have been decapitated.

She pitched the nose downwards and broke right. She didn’t want to try and race through the narrower streets, for the same reason that she didn’t want to clean her teeth with industrial solvent, but having some more buildings around would give her more to work with. Especially since the added weight on the Horde skimmers would likely hurt their manoeuvrability.

A left, a right, another left. She rolled the skimmer, narrowly shooting under a high walkway between two spires; an explosion of glass and fire behind them told her that one of the Horde skimmer pilots had been less agile.

That thought gave her a moment of pause – not one that affected her flying, thankfully. She’d only just stopped being just like those pilots – one in a more prestigious position than planetary enforcement, but just as much a part of the machine. People just like the crew of that skimmer had been her friends.

Now at least two people were dead – people just like she’d been, mere days ago.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered under her breath as she turned another corner. “The Horde has to be stopped.”

* * *

Adora swung the skimmer into a low, narrow corridor and brought it to a halt as quickly as she dared. They were a few streets from the spaceport; hopefully, they’d have time to get there before the Horde skimmers found them.

A press of a button disconnected the storage hopper from the transport, and it dropped to the ground with a faint thud, crushing the snow underneath.

A thought occurred, and she turned to Glimmer. “You should probably be wearing a helmet for this; you’re the one on the wanted posters.” She pulled off her helmet and offered it to the Scourge of the Starways. The scent of the night air was muted, although the chill of it burned her nostrils, but she could detect faint hints of their transport’s exhaust.

Freshly helmed, Glimmer gestured to Bow, and they picked up the box. “Guess we’ll have to find weapons somewhere else,” muttered Glimmer darkly.

“I’m just worried about the food,” shot back Bow. “There’s only so much we can do with those awful Horde ration bars.”

Glimmer chuckled. “Now that’s prioritisation. Come on, let’s get going.”

Luckily, most of the Horde troops seemed to be busy elsewhere, and it didn’t take them long to reach the docking bay. They fell in with some other guards carrying Horde-stamped crates, hoping to blend in…

Quietly, Glimmer said, “I’m getting messages from the ship now. Entrapta says we should head for bay 94.”

“That’s lucky,” said Bow. “This is bay 94.”

One knack you picked up in the Horde was being able to identify people by their stance. Adora could recognise Lynda as one of the people shifting crates.

“Gonna need your code,” grunted the Horde functionary at the door.

“Adora, SP0P-19B5.”

The functionary checked their wrist computer. “You’ve been flagged. We’re going to have to ask you to come with us-”

There was a clattering sound, exactly like a crate full of weapons hitting the ground, and in a single, flowing motion, Lynda hit them on the head with a stun prod, before scything it into another guard’s stomach. Before the other Horde officers could react, Adora hurled herself into the fight, her own stun prod in hand.

It didn’t take long.

“Finally, darlings,” Lynda purred, before a black and green aura flared around her. “I was wondering when you’d finish your little errand. It’s been such a nuisance waiting for you.”

Glimmer’s palm clunked against her visor. “Double Trouble, what are you doing here?”

“Arranging some supplies for you, your highness,” said the shapeshifter, grinning viciously. They delivered a bow that would have seemed overly dramatic from anyone else; from Double Trouble, it was if anything tastefully understated. “Consider it a gesture of friendship.”

“We’re not friends,” said Glimmer bluntly.

“Then consider it a bribe; I’m flexible.” Their nictitating membranes flickered across their eyes in a perpendicular blink, and their voice dropped to a growl. “I want off this frozen hellhole. I’m not built for these temperatures, your highness.”

Belatedly, as if realising it had missed something important, an alarm started up. Glimmer sighed and reached for her holster…then, seemingly thinking better of it, pressed the hilt of the pistol into Adora’s hand. “This is yours; you should really have it back. Sorry.”

Beside her, Double Trouble pried open the fallen crate. “You may like this more anyway, darling.”

Beneath her visor, Glimmer’s eyes widened with enthusiasm as Double Trouble withdrew a menacing-looking weapon. It was closer to carbine-length than a rifle (not that energy weapons used rifling), with a wide muzzle and underslung stun prod – probably designed for close quarters.

Glimmer took the weapon and tested the weight. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re not wrong…”

* * *

Catra emerged from the shuttle into a din of klaxons and shouting. Perfect. The mission was ten seconds old and already it had gone to shit.

She selected someone at random and slammed him up against the bay wall, his armour clattering against the reinforced synthcrete. “What the hell is going on here?”

“I don’t know!” Either this guy was a master actor, or he was just as confused as she was – if somewhat less angry. “Some kind of firefight in bay 94!”

Catra’s frustrated sigh somehow put the soldier in mind of a weapon being cocked. “Great. Aren’t you guys lucky we’re here to save your sorry asses?”

The guy fled, and Catra turned to the squad. “Come on, grab a gun and let’s get going. Kyle, just…I dunno, try not to hurt anyone on our side.”

Lonnie plucked a broad-barrelled carbine from a box in the docking bay. “At least they’re givin’ us the fun stuff to play with, right?”

* * *

Bay 94 was a firestorm. Admittedly, it was one with a surprisingly low body count – the rebels mostly seemed to be providing covering fire – but it was still a firestorm.

One of the rebels, a girl with dirty-blonde hair and a ponytail, spun to point her pistol at Catra-

“Adora!”

Adora looked honestly shocked. “Catra?!”

Before either of them could say anything else, the squeal of tyres echoed through the docking bay, and a cyborg with wheeled prostheses, the smell of scorched rubber wrapped around him like a scarf, burst into the chaos, blazing away with a Horde-standard infantry rifle. It was just so out-of-nowhere that Catra could only boggle.

One of the other defenders – someone in Horde armour – grabbed Adora by the shoulder and dragged her into the ship, and Catra had to dive aside to avoid a carbine blast. It would be some time before Catra realised Adora was struggling against the forced retreat; all Catra saw was her quarry escaping.

She tried to follow, but a shot hit the bay floor just in front of her, and the blast knocked her far enough off her rhythm that the transport’s hatch was closed before she could get into it, and her shots pattered off the hull like spring rain.

With a snarl closer to a wild animal than a trained soldier, she turned her attention to the last non-Horde target: the cyborg with the rifle. Her already impressive speed and strength amplified by her fury, it took her only moments to almost literally take the enemy apart; she eased her work by knocking the cyborg unconscious with one brutal swing from his own prosthetic arm, now severed at the shoulder. It was only Rogelio ripping the weapon from her hand that spared the asshole from being beaten to death.

Catra’s eyes swam with tears of rage as the transport lifted out of the docking bay and disappeared into the night sky.

* * *

“Not that I’m, like, complaining,” said Mermista, in a voice that implied she could start complaining any time she wanted, “but I’m pretty sure we threw them out, like, four hours ago. So why are they back?” Behind her, the stars behind the viewport dissolved into the fractal patterns of jumpspace as Entrapta and Emily hit the jets.

“We did,” said Glimmer. “Double Trouble, why _are_ you back?”

“I suspected that you could use a hand, darlings.” The shapeshifter smirked. “And you must admit I was quite helpful in the scrap.”

“If this is some kind of bid to regain our trust, it’s not working.” Glimmer’s voice was that of a judge passing sentence. “The only reason we’re not throwing you right back off the ship is that we probably have a while in flight before we get to a system that isn’t on high alert. So I’m going to ask you again: _why are you back?_ I don’t buy for a minute that after you accepted a Horde bribe to plant a tracker you spontaneously developed a conscience.”

“Oh, it’s not conscience, your highness. It’s personal achievement.” Glimmer looked confused at this, so Double Trouble continued, in a gently chiding voice, “You’ve always seen me as a hack, haven’t you? Someone who will do anything for the money. And it’s amused me to give that impression, at least so far. But make no mistake, darling: I don’t do this for the money. I do this because it’s _fun_. I am an _artist_ , darling, and chaos is my medium. How could I pass up the chance to watch so much of it unfold?”

“You’re grandstanding,” said Glimmer bluntly.

“Yes, and I’m good at it, darling. My point is that I was never far away from you on Tobis. I was keeping tabs on you the whole time – either directly, or via the helmet I stole – to see what you would do under the circumstances. And what _did_ you do?” Double Trouble began counting on their fingers. “You impersonated officers of the law, such as it is, burgled a shop, had a big chase in a stolen vehicle, sabotaged the local infrastructure and had a shoot-out with the Horde with only a _little_ nudge from me…and Tobis isn’t much of a settlement. Multiply tonight’s little adventure by the number of systems this ship is likely to go to, boost it up for the more active ones…really, darling, how could I _not_ want to come along? This ship is going to be the eye of a hurricane, and I am _here_ for it.” Razor-sharp teeth glinted in the light. “Pro bono.”

Glimmer studied them for a long moment. Then, with a venomous smile, she said, “If you screw us again, you’re going out the airlock. I hear I have quite a reputation for it with the Horde, and I do so hate to disappoint my public.”

“Oh, _very_ well done, your highness,” they said, chuckling. “I can tell we’re going to have _such_ fun. My talents are at your disposal, your highness; I assume lodgings have been prepared for me in one of the cells?”

“For you, Double Trouble, nothing but the best,” said Glimmer in a sweetly sarcastic tone. “We’ll put a big star on the door just for you.”

“Finally, true recognition for my talents!”

* * *

The dented and bruised cyborg sat in the chair, wires trailing from where his prostheses used to be, and Catra loomed over him.

It was honestly kind of a novel experience for her, being the one doing the looming. She could kind of see why Shadow Weaver seemed to enjoy it so much. She’d been selected for intimidation factor; apparently nearly beating someone to death with his own extremities

Her eyes flicked over the tablet she’d been given. “Theydon, planet of origin currently unknown. Nickname…oh, this can’t be real…Dragstor.” Her eyebrow flicked upwards; nailed it, for once. “What, did you lose-”

“Yeah, yeah, lose a bet, the girl with the feathers already used that one,” snapped Theydon. It was a thin, almost hopeless pantomime of courage, a shell of bravado that could crack at any moment, but it was a show of _some_ spirit, at least. “You guys need to work on your comedy.”

“Girl with the feathers?” Catra tapped a few controls on the tablet. “What girl with feathers?”

“One of you Horde types. Stole our transport. Which is gonna cost you, by the way – we were working for one of yours, and he’s got our back! You weren’t supposed to break the deal!”

Catra continued to fiddle with the tablet, although the prisoner’s whining was definitely beginning to get on her already-frayed nerves. “Nobody stationed on Tobis Tertius was from a feathered species, jackass. You guys can’t even tell fake Horde from real. Any guess at her species?”

“I wanna say half-Lunavian? She had the markings for it – not the skin tone of a full Lunavian, though. Not sure what happened to her wings.” He leaned forward conspiratorially, or at least made what effort he could without working arms or legs. “Used to know a half-Lunavian outcast. Hawke, her name was. Said she was tricked into betraying them-”

Catra suppressed the urge to shorten his limbs any further and settled for a brusque, “Yeah, I don’t care.”

That settled it, at least. The Horde did not like interspecies relationships and it _definitely_ did not recruit half-breeds. The girl was obviously a rebel…

Wait a second. Catra’s eyes flicked to the door of the interrogation room – she couldn’t see out of it, but she knew that on the other side was a wall of wanted posters. Including a half-Lunavian with a very large reward at the top.

Adora hadn’t just fallen in with rebels. She’d fallen in with one of the most wanted rebels in Horde space, the Scourge of the Starways herself.

_Dammit, Adora! Why are you this starsdamned dumb?_

* * *

The _Constrictor_ had been designed for a minimal crew, but there was an officers’ lounge for the handful of command staff. A battered table, outfitted with some fairly basic holo-arrays, sat at its heart, and around the table were gathered Adora, Glimmer, Bow, Mermista and Perfuma – plus a drone to ensure Entrapta’s and Emily’s perspectives were heard.

Glimmer fiddled with the controls, and a starmap appeared. “We’re currently in the Kestos outer system. It’s pretty deep in Horde territory, so we’re not going to be getting back to the Free Territories soon – and if we make a beeline for Brightmoon, they’re going to be on our asses the entire way.”

“So, random-walk?” said Mermista.

“Exactly. It’ll extend the trip, but at the very least they won’t be able to shadow us _everywhere_.” Glimmer nodded to Mermista and Perfuma. “I appreciate that you aren’t formal Alliance signatories – at least not yet – but my home is closest, and it shouldn’t be too hard to get transport from there to Plumerian and Salinean space.”

Adora’s forehead wrinkled. “What’s this about an Alliance?”

“We tend to just call it the Rebellion,” Bow told her. “The Free Territories used to be united against the Horde, but the treaty fell apart years ago.”

“The Horde always told me the entire galaxy was against us,” Adora said softly. “Guess it’s more like we were against it, huh?”

Glimmer coughed. “Bow, you had some ideas about the ship?”

“Yeah.” He tapped the controls for the holo-array, and an image of the _Constrictor_ was projected in front of them. “I think we need to disguise it: there aren’t exactly a lot of aftermarket Horde prison transports out there. Fresh paint job, some modifications to break up the silhouette, clean transponder.”

“We should fit some weapons,” said Adora. “I don’t know how long fancy flying is going to keep us safe-”

“That’s not a good idea,” said the drone sitting on the table, in Entrapta’s voice. “Emily doesn’t want to be a weapon of war – and anyway, if we show up in a system with obvious guns, we’ll be obviously in breach of the law and that’ll draw Horde attention.”

Adora made a frustrated noise. “Can we at least get my Carnivore fixed, then? We should have _something_ that can fight.”

“We’ll need some parts, but I’ll take care of it,” said Entrapta cheerily. “Probably even make some upgrades.”

“Fine,” said Adora, her voice grudging.

Mermista tapped the table. “We should probably look into, like, more supplies. I’m firmly voting against dying, and I’m pretty sure you guys left our shuttle on Tobis.”

Glimmer buried her face in her hands, Bow let out a low groan, and Adora made a face like she’d bitten down hard on a lemon. They had left the shuttle on Tobis.

Perfuma raised a hand. “If we took out some cell walls and put in the right lights, I could convert the space into a garden. That will keep our oxygen supply high, and I could even grow food – or at least flavouring, if we intend to keep using these ration bars.”

“That could work,” said Adora with a nod. “The algal supply looked fine last time I saw it, but that’s mostly just because we have fewer people; a backup supply would be good. Horde ships aren’t designed to keep going forever.”

Mermista thought for a moment. “We should also have a water tank.”

“Agreed,” said Bow. “You need it for your health, Perfuma needs it for her plants, and if we’re all going to be on here for ages, we’ll need to keep clean and have a reserve. There’s probably some cells we could convert into water storage.”

Glimmer gave a curt nod and said, “Let’s do it. Entrapta, we’re going to need you for a lot of this – and of course we want to make sure that Emily’s, um, okay with any modifications we do.” She made a face. “I almost said ‘on board’ there.”

“One other thing: we need a new name,” said Bow. “I don’t think _Constrictor_ is really how we want to present ourselves to the universe.”

“It’s a proud Horde name!” protested Adora. “Just like the _Fright Zone_ , or the _Dominion_ , or the _Tenebrous_ , or the _Tormentor_ , or the _Devastation_ – you know, I’m beginning to feel really stupid right about now.”

“I kinda like it.” This was from Mermista. “Tells people not to mess with us.”

“But it’s also what the Horde knows we’re called,” said Perfuma.

Mermista gave her a grudging nod. “Good point.”

Adora thought for a moment and said, “ _Protector_?”

Bow nodded. “I like it. Anyone else?”

Glimmer and Perfuma nodded in assent.

“I still prefer _Constrictor_ ,” grumbled Mermista, “but _fine_ , I guess.”

Glimmer turned to the drone. “Is Emily okay with changing the ship name to _Protector_?”

“Just gonna check…she loves it!” The drone tapped its front limbs together in what Adora realised was clapping. “Looks like this ship is now the _Protector_!”

“One other thing I wanna bring up,” said Mermista. “We gotta have, like, a chore wheel or something, ‘cause I’m not getting stuck with Perfuma’s cooking every day.” She didn’t seem to notice that the Plumerian was shooting daggers at her. “We can put Horde girl-”

“She has a _name_ ,” said Bow sharply.

“Fine, then we can put _Adora_ on it when she knows how to, like, cook.” Mermista smiled thinly. “Gotta get her used to eating food before we can get her to make it, right?”

“We’ll get all that figured out, yeah,” said Glimmer. She gestured to Adora and Bow. “You two, come with me. We need to take care of something really important.”

* * *

Shadow Weaver’s door hissed open, with a hissing, grinding sound, like the dying gasp of a mechanical snake.

She didn’t even look up. “I have already given orders that I am not to be disturbed-”

“Shadow Weaver.” The voice of the newcomer was deep, it was cold, and it was menacing.

“Lord Hordak!” Shadow Weaver’s air of hostile indifference dissipated instantly. “I had not been informed-”

“There is much of which you have not been informed, Shadow Weaver,” said the Prime, his eyes burning like coals. “Your insistence on interfering in my mission despite that lack of information grows wearisome, however. Within the last few operational days, you have lost our test subject and interfered with a valuable supply line for First One artefacts. I hope this will not require…disciplinary action on my part.” The machinery of his armour made a scraping sound as it shifted.

“I will recover the subject, my Lord-”

“It is not worth the greater mission, Shadow Weaver,” Hordak said, every syllable a threat. “If you continue interfering with other aspects of my projects, I will consider you a threat to my mission and deal with you appropriately – and if the subject cannot be recovered swiftly, terminate it.”

* * *

Adora stepped out of the room and lost the ability to speak coherently. Glimmer’s choices from the clothes rack they’d scavenged were…well, objectively speaking they were pretty covering, but with one arm and the area around her neck largely exposed, a lot of Glimmer’s skin markings and some of her feathers were clearly visible. The part of Adora that had made a big deal about Glimmer’s eyes was having some interesting reactions to that, which she was going to have to think about later.

After a few moments, Adora found her voice. “Aren’t you feeling a bit, um, exposed? There aren’t too many half-Lunavians out there.”

“This is just for aboard the ship,” said Glimmer. “I’ll show off my mission gear later.” She flashed Bow a thumbs-up. “Gotta say, Bow, you picked out some good stuff for her.”

Adora looked down at her own new wardrobe. She’d looked at the pile of clothes they’d gotten from Tobis Tertius, but had frozen up at the sheer scale of it – it was like being taught swimming by being thrown in a lake. Only worse, because the Horde had at least told her what swimming was before they did that. So Bow had stepped in with some recommendations until she’d gotten a bit more used to the whole thing.

As it was, her Horde uniform had been set aside for a red jumpsuit with grey markings, long grey pants, and a sleeveless blue jacket, leaving her forearms bare. Bow had also rigged up a shoulder holster for her pistol.

“Now we just need to do something about the hair,” said Glimmer.

“What’s wrong with my hair?”

“It’s the same style you were using in the Horde. You’re going to be a fugitive now too; we need to make sure the Horde can’t just use your old records to make up the wanted posters. Besides, I think you’d look good in a braid.” She pursed her lips. “Maybe an undercut, too.”

Bow shot her a Look. “We’re not just doing this so you can test out new hairstyles.”

“It’s not like I can braid much of my own hair, Bow! It doesn’t go well with feathers!”

* * *

Catra felt the hair on her neck beginning to prickle, and before she could react, she was seized in a grip like a vice, her arms and legs frozen in position. She hated this part. She’d always hated this part.

Shadow Weaver’s voice, as ever, was low and venomous, and it was coming from behind her. “Catra. I’ve reviewed the footage and the debriefings of the fight you were just in.”

“I wouldn’t call it a fight,” Catra said bitterly. “We showed up, a few shots were fired, and they ran away.”

“You may be interested to know that the rest of your squadron reported seeing Adora fighting alongside the rebels. You did not. Moreover…you did not seem to be surprised to see her there.” Shadow Weaver moved forward, until her head was right above Catra’s shoulder. “You knew she would be there, and you failed to report it. Why?”

“I thought you figured it out already,” hissed Catra. “A rebel ship gets a new pilot, and a good one, at the same time that one of our best flyers disappears? A flyer who had already been stuck on the rebel ship for a while?” She permitted herself a slight smirk. “Since you’ve always had such a low estimate of my intelligence, I thought figuring that one out would have come easily to you.”

“I grow weary of your insubordination!” Magical energy earthed itself through Catra’s body, and the only reason she didn’t flinch was that she couldn’t. “However…you may be of use to me yet. Your squadron has been assigned to field-testing duty; you’ll be under the command of Force Captain Scorpia.”

“Field-testing what?” said Catra, struggling to keep a veneer of studied indifference on her words. The less Shadow Weaver knew about what Catra wanted, the fewer chances she’d have to ruin it.

“A few squadrons of prototype Predator fighters have just been assigned to us. Your squadron – what remains of it anyway – has been issued some. I have assigned you sufficient additional members to make up for Adora’s absence.”

Catra tried to nod, but Shadow Weaver hadn’t released her arcane grip. “So what’s our next mission? Can’t leave those shiny new Predators sitting around in the hangar for long, right?”

“Hunting, Catra. We’re going hunting.” A shiver ran down Catra’s spine as Shadow Weaver spoke. “Your mission is to bring back Adora. Alive. No matter the cost to your squadron.”

Catra wanted to demand some answers – why Adora was so important – but the question died on her tongue. Shadow Weaver didn’t give answers to questions like that. Not honest ones. And Shadow Weaver didn’t trust her notes to the Horde computer system, so Catra couldn’t even get an answer by using her codes; she’d need to get creative.

There was no way one pilot, even one as good as Adora, was worth a whole squadron including prototype fighters. Shadow Weaver was up to something – well, obviously she was, she was breathing, but still – and Catra intended to find out what.

No matter the cost to her squadron.


	3. Adora's Bazaar Adventure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The _Protector_ takes on supplies at the sprawling markets of Velavel, and Adora stumbles on a strange old lady.

Adora studied her hair in the mirror, and her teeth ground against each other. She should have figured this out by now, she knew. It was just a _hairdo_ , not some mysterious fighting style or the controls of some alien warship.

A buzzing from elsewhere in her quarters – definitely her comms – told her that she was going to have to live a messy braid. They were going to be landing soon, and she would be needed.

She pulled on the sleeveless blue jacket and looked at the table. In an effort to make their rooms appear closer to “living space” and further from “prison cells”, Entrapta and Emily had taken some of the raw materials being freed by the removal of walls in the forthcoming biobay and gotten their drones to assemble bits of furniture. Sitting on top of this table, little more than a crude metal box, was a strip of white fabric, which she tied around her upper arm; none of them could risk being caught out during this outing by not following Velavel’s local customs.

She stifled a yawn. Without an injury to recover from, she’d had to get to sleep the old-fashioned way, and the lack of movement and bodies around her had been troublesome – you got used to the presence of so many others in the Horde. She’d gotten some sleep, but depending on how the day went, possibly not enough.

And it didn’t help that the sleep she _had_ gotten wasn’t exactly the most relaxing time she’d had.

_A tall figure loomed over her, syringe in hand…_

She shook her head, dismissing the nightmare from her memories, and headed out.

* * *

The rest of the crew were gathering for breakfast. Most of them were wearing white armbands, but Bow’s was black, and Double Trouble sported one in green.

Mermista gave her a nod before tucking into a bowl of what looked like yesterday’s leftovers. Last night had been Mermista’s turn to cook; the result had been a genuine taste sensation, as long as you counted pain as a sensation. (It wasn’t that it tasted _bad_ , exactly, but Mermista either had an armour-plated tongue when it came to hot spices, or she’d been trying to mess with everyone, possibly both – although if it was the latter, she’d probably been disappointed when both Glimmer and Double Trouble had wolfed it down with every sign of enjoyment.)

Most of them had chosen their own garments from the spoils of the Tobis raid. Perfuma wore a simple pink dress that bared her shoulders, showing off the bark-like scales, while Bow had managed to get a white crop top and blue pants that fit him out of the mess, and Mermista was clad in teal with a dark green sash draped over the top. Double Trouble, on the other hand, appeared unchanged, clad in their usual black and green catsuit – Adora was trying very hard not to speculate on whether it was actual clothing or if they were technically naked and using shapeshifting to appear dressed.

Glimmer, meanwhile, had added some layers for the mission: she’d pulled on a very long white glove to cover the markings on her bare arm, added fingerless gloves over the top on both sides, and donned a plain blue hooded cloak to conceal her head and shoulders. She’d also rigged up a sling for one of the carbines they’d claimed on Tobis Tertius, making some effort to conceal the gun under her cloak.

“Okay,” she said, standing at the head of the table. “Everyone remember the priorities for our day trip to Velavel?”

“Let me see, your highness.” Double Trouble started counting on their fingers, marking off each finger with a flick of their tail. “We require gardening supplies, food, fuel, weapons, and…if possible…a new shuttle. What we don’t have is more than pocket change-”

“Most of it in yours,” said Mermista drily.

“I can’t help it if you bet unwisely, darling…anyway, my _point_ is that we have another priority: don’t get caught.”

Bow and Perfuma both fidgeted uncomfortably at that. Truth be told, Adora could sympathise – now that the adrenaline rush of that initial defection had worn off, she was beginning to have some private doubts about where their crime should really be directed.

Mermista said, “My dad brought me here when I was, like, seven – a few years before the Horde takeover, while the old portal network was up. Kind of a family trip. Don’t really remember much.” A rare smile flitted across her features. “I did like the pies, though.”

* * *

The bazaar was a press of people. Adora hadn’t seen this many people in one place _ever_.

 _Protector_ had done its best to go unnoticed: it had made its approach behind Velavel’s moon, come in to land outlined against the sun, and had come to rest within a forest to the north of the settlement. It helped that Velavel was handled with a comparatively light touch by the Horde: the garrison commander knew that the planet’s vast markets were the source of its wealth – as a tourist destination, if nothing else – and prioritised making it look safe for visitors as opposed to coming down like a hammer. The settlement was full of hexagonal towers, capped off with gleaming sky-blue domes; brooding on the skyline was the palace of the region’s nobility, apparently a modernised reconstruction of some archaic castle.

About two-thirds of the bazaar’s residents were wearing local dress: a grey chiton, trimmed in a bright hue and hung with belts and pouches for the things they needed to carry. There were enough visitors that Adora didn’t feel exposed for not wearing it, though: mostly humans and Plumerians, with a few scorpioni at the edges. It was the first time she’d seen scorpioni wearing anything besides Horde uniforms.

It didn’t take long for the crew of the _Protector_ to split off into small groups, each pursuing their own objectives: Bow and Perfuma hunting planting materials, Mermista checking for weapons and fuel. This left Adora, Glimmer and Double Trouble in another group.

Adora’s eyes flicked from armband to armband. Some, like them, were using simple strips of fabric, while others had stylised plastic; a few, generally those in the fanciest-looking outfits, even bore gold bands set with appropriately coloured gemstones. At a rough estimate, about three-quarters wore either black or white: her own white band marked her as female, while the black one identified Bow as male. Most of the remainder wore the light blue band that confirmed them to be ythmen, a gender unique to the local culture that Adora did not really have the cultural context to understand; still, as long as she stuck to xe/xem pronouns and didn’t ask anything intrusive people probably wouldn’t notice. Double Trouble’s green band, under local rules, marked them as nonb – actually, in context that should probably be nontrinary.

Speaking of Double Trouble, the shapeshifter had just nudged Glimmer. “That ythman over there – xe’s an old employer.”

“So we should assume xe wants you dead?” whispered Glimmer sardonically. “I’ve been your employer, remember.”

“There’s no need to take it so _personally_ , darling. You got out of your little scrape without much trouble, and with a new… _friend_ to boot.” A vicious grin crawled across Double Trouble’s face. “In this case, though, I was thinking that xe might have some kind of work for us…I’ll go and check.”

The shapeshifter vanished into the crowd, and Glimmer started muttering furiously as the press of bodies stopped her from following. “If they show their face again, I’m going to punch it off. Let’s see them shapeshift their way out of that.” She slid a computer pad out from a pouch on her belt and checked it. “I’m getting some chatter on rebel frequencies. If we can find a local cell, we might be able to cut some sort of deal with the leaders. Come on; I know this code, so I should be able to find the source.”

* * *

Meanwhile, on the _Fright Zone_ , Catra stabbed a finger at the manifest, her claw clicking against the datascreen. “Says here we’ve been issued three of the new, direct quote, ‘prototype Predator-class multirole fighters’.”

“That’s what it says, yeah,” said Lonnie.

“There are four of us.”

“That’s my count.”

“Plus,” said Catra, “this new Force Captain of Shadow Weaver’s.”

“And anyone else they’ve assigned.”

“Them too, _thanks_ Lonnie. I figure one for the new captain, one for me, which means you and Kyle get to fight it out over who gets the third one, and everyone else goes into battle in the storage compartment.”

Lonnie’s eyebrow quirked upwards. “And if they don’t have storage compartments?”

“Then we’ll nail some lockers to the bottom and file a complaint that everyone will ignore,” said Catra, her temper visibly fraying. “Come on, they’re not gonna wait forever.”

* * *

Ten minutes later and five bits of graffiti that Adora could not have distinguished from ordinary scrawl without Glimmer’s keen eyes to spot the clues, they reached what Adora assumed to be the rebel liaison, lurking behind a flower stall. The tables were hung with patterned cloths and covered in a riot of shapes and shades, and Adora breathed deeply, taking in the wild medley of aromas – a far cry from the funk of metal, ozone and sweat that permeated most Horde ships.

The woman was small, slightly built, with pale yellow skin and orange hair; her eyes, which lacked iris or pupil in favour of a patch of iridescent green hexagons, were restless, flicking across the crowd for potential threats. Small wings were just visible on her back.

Glimmer seemed unusually tense, but Adora supposed that made sense – the mission was young and they were already hurting for supplies. 

“After anything in particular, stranger?” asked the small woman, and Adora could see the recognition in Glimmer’s eyes. The stranger’s accent was unusual: most of her words were very short, clipped, with something of a staccato rhythm, but the letter S was elongated and had a slight buzz to it.

“Depends,” said Glimmer, in a tone that was just non-suspicious enough to be very suspicious indeed. “Got any stormflowers?”

“You won’t find stormflowers anywhere this time of year,” said the woman, but something about how she said it told Adora that they’d passed the test. “Sweet Bee.”

“Glimmer.”

Sweet Bee whistled, a low sound with an edge of distortion to it. “Don’t often get visitors with your reputation. Explains the hood, anyway. What brings you to our humble shop?”

“We need supplies. We’ve got a long way to go and our ship doesn’t have much.”

“What do you have to trade?”

Glimmer rocked back a little. She covered it well, but she’d probably been banking a little too much on the common cause covering for the problem of having almost no money. “We have a few, uh, Horde-standard aprons and gardening tools, or, uh…We could – do you have any _work_ that needs doing? Weeding, pest control, that sort of thing?”

“Okay, stop,” said Sweet Bee. “I appreciate the effort but figuring out this metaphor is getting to be a pain in the ass. Come out back and we can – ah, stars dammit.” She made a low and frustrated noise and gestured to the north. Visible through the press of the crowd were some Horde helmets, heading their way with clear purpose.

“Piss,” said Glimmer succinctly. She turned to the tiny alien. “Go to ground. We’ll try and-”

“Go with her, Glimmer,” said Adora. “I’ll distract the Horde. Any rebel slogans I should know about? Gotta make this convincing.”

Glimmer blinked in confusion. “‘Death to the Primes’ usually does the trick, but-”

“Great. I’ll see you on the ship when we’re done.” Glimmer seemed to be wavering between staying to deal with the Horde soldiers and hiding. “Go! If they see you, that ruins the entire thing!”

Glimmer nodded and dived over the table, hot on Sweet Bee’s heels.

Adora moved onto the stall on the other side of the path, scattering fruit everywhere – large, green shapes that landed with _splat_ s. She took a deep breath and yelled, “Death to the Primes!”

As the troops began to accelerate in her direction, she kicked some further fruit – round, hard ones, the kind that would make pursuit inconvenient – into the thoroughfare, and began to run. There was a crash from behind as one of the Horde soldiers skidded on the fruit and received a hasty introduction to the floor.

It was a promising start.

* * *

Waiting in the briefing room were two uniformed figures: one in the burgundy hues of a Force Captain, the other in the same white and red that cadets wore. (Even Catra had worn it; if she made a good first impression, she could probably get away with more stuff later.)

The new cadet was a Salinean – one of the deep-sea ethnicities, too, with tentacles instead of hair, large black eyes, and rich green skin. He reminded Catra a little bit of Octavia, her arch-nemesis throughout most of basic training, but lacking her ruthlessness and (ironically enough) fire; this guy was obviously a bundle of nerves, and frankly Catra suspected that Kyle was finally going to have some competition for the bottom spot on the pecking order.

As for the new Force Captain…well, the first thing that didn’t make sense was that she was a scorpioni. The Horde didn’t train scorpioni fighter pilots, because those claws meant they couldn’t really operate the controls – they were generally used as foot troops, or sometimes gunners in vehicles. This was a really weird, and therefore suspicious, call on Shadow Weaver’s part-

Then Catra’s eye fell on the woman’s arms, and she momentarily lost her train of thought. _Big_ muscles. She shook her head slightly, as if attempting to dislodge the image of those biceps, and mentally zoomed out a little: the Force Captain was built like a tank, with white hair and pale skin that contrasted with the dull crimson of her carapace. She was smiling, but it looked kind of awkward and forced.

The big woman coughed and reached into a bag that was sitting on a handy table, extracting what looked like cue cards. As Catra watched, a few of them slipped free of her claws.

“Um,” said the big woman. “Gosh, I hope I didn’t put anything important on those.” More cards escaped. “Darn it. Um. Okay.” She took a deep breath and dropped a few more cards. “Hi, team, I’m Force Captain Scorpia, and it looks like we’re going to be working together for a while. So let’s just…um…”

As the last of her cards hit the deck, she seemingly noticed Catra for the first time.

“-oh gosh, aren’t you adorable?”

Catra heard Lonnie suppress a snicker, and made a mental note to put something unpleasant in her bunk after the briefing.

Decisively, Scorpia said, “Uh.” Her eyes darted around the room, and Catra could just make out the faintest hint of sweat on her forehead. “Let’s just try to have fun with it, I guess?”

“We gonna do a test flight with the new ships or somethin’?” said Lonnie, impatience audible in every syllable.

“A test flight!” Scorpia’s relief was palpable. “Right. Yes. That is what we will be doing. A test flight. To test how they fly. Which is what a test flight is for. Let’s get…let’s get to the hangar. For the test flight.”

By this point, Catra was struggling to mask her disbelief. Either Scorpia was really impressive in a fight, or she had blackmail material on Shadow Weaver, because otherwise Catra had no idea how she’d made it to Force Captain.

* * *

“There she is!”

Well, that hadn’t worked. Adora rolled out from under the parked skimmer and started running again, too busy gasping for air to swear (although it was very tempting). At least she was getting plenty of exercise.

She leaped another stall, darting into a fresh lane in a spray of second-hand clothes and a volley of complaints from the Salinean holding down the fort. One small mercy was that the Horde couldn’t really open fire on her in here: there was no way to get a clear shot in such a crowd, and Horde commanders tended to be very unsympathetic when it came to starting riots – without permission, anyway.

On the right was a tent – a tattered affair of purple cloth, covered in patches and stains. She had only a few moments before her pursuers had line of sight to her again, so she dashed through the doorway…

…and found herself confronted with a pair of giant eyes, which she realised a moment later were being hugely magnified by some kind of eyewear – goggles, by the looks of it.

The owner of the eyes was an old woman, draped in a shapeless mass of purple fabric, whose species she couldn’t immediately place. (Some kindly soul appeared to have tied a length of white cord around her upper arm; it was coming loose, and the ends were fraying.) She appeared mostly human, although her skin was a dull purple-pink. A shiver ran down Adora’s spine; while the old woman’s hair was a stark white, the untamed mass of it reminded her faintly of Catra’s mane.

The old woman squinted at her. “Did Mara send you, dearie? Yes, that must be it, why else would you be visiting old Razz?”

“Uh, who’s Mara?”

“There is no need to pretend with Razz, dearie!” said the old woman genially. “Now you come along.”

Adora found herself bundled through a partition into the back of the tent and into a rickety chair facing a small wooden table. The exertion and lack of sleep had caught up with her, and she couldn’t muster up the energy to struggle – although she could still talk.

“Please,” she managed. “You shouldn’t. The Horde-”

“Ach, the Horde do not bother old Razz,” said the old lady, fiddling with some sort of metal vessel. After a few moments, it emitted a tinny bubbling noise, and Adora recognised the sound of boiling water. She tensed up; if the old lady planned to throw the water at her, she could dodge -

“It will be hot enough soon, and then we’ll have a nice cup of tea, dearie. How do you take it?”

Tea. Okay. She knew vaguely what that was. Adora frantically rifled through her mental files on Interacting With People for an answer that wouldn’t make her look stupid.

“Um. I drink it?” More information was probably needed. “Out of a cup?”

Nailed it.

The old woman appeared more amused than anything, though. “Very funny, dearie. It’s nice to talk to someone with a sense of humour. Mara is a good friend, but she is so very serious all the time. I tell her again and again, Mara dearie, you have to relax! If you focus only on the darkness, you will forget what the light looks like! But she does not listen.” The metal vessel began to quiet itself. “Milk? Sucra?”

“Um. Yes please?”

Nodding sagely, Razz extracted two mugs from a bag on the floor – white enamel, the kind of thing you’d use in the field, but battered and worn. One of them had something painted on the side; it looked like some sort of animal, possibly a skitlet.

A thought occurred to Adora, and she coughed. “Got any stormflowers?”

The old woman gave her a puzzled look, before turning her attention back to the mugs. “Enough jokes, dearie! Where would old Razz get stormflowers?” Blue-tinted liquid was added – the milk, Adora assumed – followed by a white powder.

Then the mug was in front of her, and Razz was sitting in another chair. The tea was definitely too hot to drink right now, so she opted to just let it sit-

Adora’s comms buzzed. “A? It’s G.” That was definitely Glimmer’s voice. “Been delayed a bit; running some errands.” There was a thud noise over the signal, the kind of sound you’d get from someone getting hit quite hard. “Could use your help, but the Horde are still looking for you – might be an idea to get out of the city for a bit.”

Razz seemed to have parsed only a little bit of that. “Out of the city, yes, dearie – I need to gather some berries for a pie, and the southern woods are a good place to find them!”

Adora shrugged. Sure, why not? It’d burn some time until Glimmer got back to her, at least.

* * *

Now that she could actually see the new Predators, Catra knew why they’d only been assigned three. They were heavier than the old Carnivores, blunt-nosed and bulky, with weapons mounted directly under the fuselage and on the wingtips rather than separated off into pods. The frame was broader, with the engines at its very edges – one above and one below the base of each of the swept-back wings.

The real reason for the smaller squadrons, however, was visible at the back: a metal sphere, mounted in a chunky socket, easily large enough to hold a crewman up to the size of, say, Rogelio or Scorpia. On either side of a red-tinted window were paired cannons, presumably aimed and fired by whoever was occupying it.

“I’ll say this for the designers,” said Lonnie, “they heard that Carnivores were useless if anyone got behind them and they listened.”

“The new engine layout’s going to be interesting to work with, though,” said Catra. She raised her voice and called, “Force Captain! What teams do you want?”

“Uh…” Scorpia rubbed her head. “How were you guys paired up before?”

“We _weren’t_ ,” said Lonnie, in the tones of one whose patience is running a bit thin, “because until these arrived we were in Carnivores.”

“Oh. Right.” Scorpia grinned sheepishly. “Uh…I’m not really sure?”

Suppressing a groan, Catra said, “Okay. Lonnie, you take New Guy-”

“Polypus,” said the Salinean.

“-you take New Guy; you’re Two. Kyle, you’re Three; Rogelio, you’re his gunner. Force Captain; you’re with me in One.” She allowed herself a grin. “Stick or shotgun?”

* * *

The forest was beginning to thin out, but not from natural processes. The acrid chemical stench that she’d gradually been becoming aware of had become overpowering, and the trees were clearly wilting. The birdsong had died away, too.

In the middle distance, Adora could see something vomit yellow, bubbling unpleasantly. After a few moments, she realised it was a river. Clearly some installation upstream: could be a mine, a factory of some sort, a fuel processing station – Horde industry used a lot of chemicals, and nothing she’d learned in basic had dwelled on safely disposing of it.

Razz eyed the withering woods sadly, and said, “It is as it has always been, dearie. The wicked look at the world and see only things to use – or to destroy, if they cannot be used.” She shook her head. “There won’t be any berries past here, Adora. We should get back to my tent, and I’ll make us some more tea, hmm?”

Adora nodded, coughing. It definitely wasn’t a good idea to hang around here for long. She suspected that if you waved a knife in the air, it would tarnish; stars only knew what it was doing to her lungs.

It would be quite some time before Adora realised that she hadn’t actually told the old woman her name.

* * *

They had barely made it back into the city when Adora heard the shout.

“Stop her! Please! She took my baby!”

“I have to go now, Razz,” said Adora grimly, scanning the street for the source of the cry.

Razz nodded. “Of course, you must go.”

The victim was a slightly built scorpioni wearing a black armband. As quickly as she could, Adora managed to get the key details: a blue-skinned humanoid, white armband, blue trim on her chiton, had knocked the scorpioni man down and stolen his daughter right out of her carriage (Adora could see it, sitting by the side of the path). Adora felt her temper rise; she was definitely going to have to think about this when she had a free moment.

Right now, though, she had a kidnapper to catch.

The break and the nature ramble had definitely done her good: it might have just been the anger surging through her body, but she felt like she could run for miles. She set off, as quickly as she could combine with scanning the area, barging past citizens and occasionally leaping over parked skimmers or other obstructions. Blue skin, blue trim…blue skin…blue trim…

There the kidnapper was, stepping through a doorway in a back alley. Adora caught it before it closed; from the feel of it, it was only a cheap sliding auto-door, and the low-rent motor gave up before her arm did, a jet of sparks momentarily lighting up the shadowy entrance. She shoved the now useless door out of her way and stepped through, into the darkness.

* * *

Adora’s jaw dropped as she saw the racks.

There must have been fifty identical capsules there. Each was about two and a half feet long, a foot and a half wide – and, through a window in each one, she could see a tiny face.

Portable stasis chambers.

This definitely wasn’t an incidental kidnapping. Someone was hoarding these. But why?

“I don’t recall inviting you,” said a deep, oily voice, and Adora snapped back to reality. In her focus on the stasis chambers, she hadn’t noticed that people were entering the room. (She really needed to work on that.)

The leader of the group was a Plumerian, clad in an extremely expensive-looking chiton, wearing an ostentatious silver armband set with jet. He was flanked by two of the largest people Adora had ever seen: a scorpioni in a blue armband, and a human with a black one. The human was armed to the teeth: a large knife at his belt, a clearly visible shoulder holster, a rifle slung on his back. Both had the kind of scars you get in combat.

The Plumerian snapped his fingers. “Grab her,” he said, confirming himself to be the owner of that deep, oily voice.

Adora quickly weighed up her options. She could probably take them, but at this distance, the human would probably have time to draw. Also, she couldn’t risk damaging the stasis chambers.

That left option two: wait for the right moment to strike.

“So you’ve managed to stumble on my little side project,” said the Plumerian condescendingly. “I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me how?”

“You’re going to pay for this,” said Adora.

“Oh, am I, really? And how are you going to make sure of that?”

She had to look nonthreatening. It was the only way she’d get a chance to act. She needed to wait for a good time to start.

“I’ll…I’ll report you to the Horde-” improvised Adora desperately, but the Plumerian only chuckled.

“Silly girl. Who do you think this cargo is _for_?”

Now. Now was a good time to start.

Adora ripped her left arm out of the human’s grip and drove her elbow into his solar plexus. As he staggered back, she lunged for his belt, grabbing the hilt of what she’d thought was a knife…

Eighteen inches of blade slid free of its sheath, and she mentally corrected herself: this was less a knife and more a machete. Either way, however, there was enough of it to give the scorpioni thug holding her other arm a nice large cut on some exposed skin – nothing life-threatening, but painful enough to force xem to let go in order to stop the bleeding.

A lunge, a grab, and she had the Plumerian in a crushing grip, blade at his throat.

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t do some gardening right now,” she snarled.

“Because what he knows could still be useful,” said a staccato voice, a faint buzz underlying every S sound.

Adora’s head snapped to the left to see Sweet Bee, flanked by Glimmer and Bow. Sweet Bee’s jaw was set, and her eyes were hard and cold, and both Glimmer and Bow were armed: Glimmer with her carbine, Bow with his, well, bow. After a moment, the dark-skinned man loosed a shot into the human Adora had struck; the arrow burst into a net, and he hit the ground with a clatter.

“He knows where these babies were stolen from,” said Sweet Bee, and Glimmer nodded her assent. “We’ll get as many back to their families as possible – but we have to know which families, and we can get that most easily from him.”

The Plumerian scowled as Adora let go; Glimmer was keeping him covered with her carbine. Truculently, he said, “Why should I talk?”

“Do you know what the traditional Velavel punishment for abducting a child is, scum?” said Sweet Bee. “Death. And not a quick one, either.” She smiled; there was absolutely no warmth in it. “And I can be quite a traditionalist, when I feel like it. You may soon wish that Adora here had slit your worthless throat.”

Some very faint sounds carry very well in the right circumstances – a knife moving in its sheath, for example. The Plumerian’s scowl fell right off his face, to be swiftly replaced with fear.

* * *

Catra grinned under her helmet as she brought the Predator out of a snap-roll and into a tight turn, the compensators lagging just a little bit behind the inertia they were there to compensate for. While it wasn’t quite as fast or manoeuvrable as their old Carnivores, she was starting to get used to the handling.

Plus, she was definitely enjoying the chance to just _fly_ again, not to carry out a mission but just for the sake of flight. Out here, it could be so much simpler. The Horde and the rebellion were just abstract concepts, names on a map, of no more significance than team markings in a game of gravball. When she sat in a fighter cockpit, it was just her – no rebels, no Primes, no Shadow Weaver…

…and no Adora.

She forced down that thought as she recalled that it wasn’t _technically_ just her.

“You okay back there, Captain?”

“Yeah, uh, doing fine,” said Scorpia. “We should probably head back to the target range, though; Three’s probably finished by now, right?”

“Don’t underestimate Kyle,” Catra told her. “If there’s a way for him to have failed at it, he’s found it.”

It had been fun while it lasted, at least.

* * *

“How did you know where I was?” said Adora, as they headed back to the _Protector_. She and Glimmer had hastily made some changes to help avoid the Horde; Glimmer was wearing Adora’s jacket and a hastily improvised headscarf, while Adora had borrowed Glimmer’s hooded cape.

Glimmer looked a little embarrassed at that. “Actually, we had no idea. Sweet Bee agreed to give us supplies in exchange for helping her deal with that scumbag; I tried to call you in, but I guess there must have been a dead zone or something that stopped you from getting the message. You definitely saved us some trouble in there, though.” Her eyes flicked to Adora’s arm. “You really wrecked up the door, by the way. Did you use a crowbar or something?”

Shrugging, Adora said, “I figured it was just a cheap motor.”

“Must’ve been-”

Glimmer went dead silent, and after a second, Adora realised why. That was definitely a Horde shuttle descending; it would be on the ground in less than a minute. They could really be eerily quiet when using only the antigrav for propulsion.

Adora found her voice. “Glimmer, stand back,” she said, reaching for her pistol.

“I can fight too.” Out came Glimmer’s carbine, and the two ducked behind a handy rock outcropping. If these were Horde soldiers, at least they had cover-

The boarding ramp opened, and a single, slender figure stepped out.

“Good news, darlings!” said Double Trouble with a smirk. “It turns out that Horde shuttles are remarkably easy to steal, especially with the guards busy trying to find you two. Honestly, I found the whole thing extremely tedious.”

Glimmer sighed heavily. “I’m guessing you called the guards on us to keep them distracted?”

Double Trouble nodded.

“I’m gonna have to start keeping you on a lead, aren’t I,” said Glimmer, wearily.

The shapeshifter winked. “Only if you buy me dinner first.”

Glimmer’s groan was the loudest and longest Adora had ever heard from her.

* * *

Catra couldn’t keep the scepticism off her face as Scorpia headed off. The Force Captain was listing slightly to one side; she definitely didn’t have much experience in a fighter. She’d managed some pretty impressive shots, mind.

“Wow,” said Lonnie from behind Catra. “They’re really hurtin’ for officers if this is the best they can do.”

“I’m looking on the bright side,” Catra said. “If she can make Force Captain, so can I.”

“I didn’t realise her ass was called ‘the Bright Side’-”

“Shut up, Lonnie.”

Lonnie saluted mockingly. “Shutting up, ma’am.”

* * *

It took Adora a few moments to realise that there was someone at the entrance to her room.

She dropped off the exercise bar she’d gotten Entrapta and Emily to make and turned to the door, which she’d left open. Glimmer was waiting there, a faint blush creeping across her cheeks as Adora wiped off some sweat. (It was immediately replaced with fresher sweat, but who was counting.)

“Uh…are you okay, Glimmer?”

“Yeah. Yeah, fine,” said Glimmer, her blush deepening a little. “Just…taking in the gun show.” Adora wasn’t sure what she meant by that. “We have another crew meeting coming up."

“You could’ve just called me,” Adora pointed out, picking up a towel. “I have a comm.”

“I also…” Glimmer breathed out. “I also wanted to check on you. You seemed…really angry dealing with that Plumerian creep earlier. Don’t get me wrong, it’s justified, but…I wanted to make sure you were doing okay. You were less angry when we captured you; that guy must’ve really hit a nerve.”

“It…wasn’t really him.” Glimmer blinked at her. “It was…seeing all those children, hearing that he was going to sell them to the Horde…I just…” She threw up her hands. “I guess that now that I’m here and finding out about all of you…I’m wondering what I missed.”

Comprehension dawned in the violet eyes. “Growing up in the Horde, you mean?”

“Yeah.” Adora finished clearing off the sweat and hung the towel carefully on the exercise bar. “No berry pies. No trips to distant planets, unless it was a training exercise. Closest I had to a mother or father was Shadow Weaver.”

“Who’s-”

“I don’t want to talk about her,” said Adora bluntly.

“All right, fair enough,” said Glimmer, raising her hands in a gesture of surrender.

“My point is…” Adora took a deep breath. “Any one of those babies could have been me – another me. For all I know, that’s how I ended up in the Horde. And it…I don’t know, I just really wanted to punch his smug face in – not just for what he’d done, but because someone else did the same thing. I don’t even know who or where.”

“I’m sorry.” Glimmer thought for a moment. “You know, Sweet Bee didn’t just give us half a tank of fuel and some seeds. After the meeting…well, better late than never, right?”

“Huh?”

“You’ll find out later. Come on.”

* * *

The meeting this time was taking place in the mess hall. Glimmer had given a little speech about how their current supply of fuel would at least last a few jumps, and Perfuma had made a start on the biobay using soil taken from Velavel and the seeds they’d gotten off Sweet Bee. Mermista had bluntly reported failure on the weaponry front, but not every mission could be 100% successful, and they still had those carbines.

Finally, Glimmer rose from her seat again.

“And of course, we should all thank Double Trouble for making sure we had a shuttle again…but I do have one question.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why is so much of it filled with boxes of books and datascreens?”

“You noticed that, then,” said Double Trouble conversationally.

“I’ve lost a lot to the Horde, Double Trouble, but they left my eyes alone,” Glimmer fired back (and Adora heard Mermista snort). “Again: why the boxes of books? Somehow I don’t think you’ve decided to retire and start a library.”

“Consider them an investment in the future, darling. Particularly if that future involves a trip to, say, Apocyn.”

“Why Apocyn?” said Glimmer, her voice suspicious.

 _You should go to Apocyn,_ said that strangely familiar voice in Adora’s mind, but she tuned it out.

Double Trouble cleared their throat theatrically. “You remember my contact – in the marketplace?”

“The ythman, yeah,” said Glimmer slowly.

“Well, xe did have some work that xe needed doing – just a little transportation, your highness, nothing exceptional. You see, darlings, the Horde occupation on Apocyn has been shutting down the education system, forcing the locals into Horde-approved schools – _very_ clumsy propaganda, really, no artistry to it at all.”

Years of Horde education told Adora to jump in here, but she held her tongue. She’d already been caught out too often by Horde education not lining up with reality.

“So,” said Double Trouble, with the air of a card player revealing a winning hand, “my contact’s… _friends_ in the import-export business are in need of some information sources that are reliable, relatively easy to move and distribute, and hard or impossible for the Horde to remotely edit. An engineering textbook is worth more than its weight in precious metals there, and for once it’s _not_ because the publisher realised they could get away with it. And my contact owed them quite a bit of money from some… _unwise_ bets in a game of nibzif, so xe jumped at the chance to clear the debt.”

“And these ‘importers’ are gonna make out like bandits, of course,” put in Mermista.

“Well, obviously, darling, but are _you_ volunteering to stay behind and make sure the price is fair?” They grinned again. “Besides, we don’t get fully paid for them until delivery.”

“‘Fully’ implies there was some cash in advance,” pointed out Glimmer.

“Finder’s fee?” said Double Trouble, but their heart obviously wasn’t in it.

“Your finder’s fee is not getting airlocked for setting the Horde on us _again_ ,” said Glimmer. “Hand it over.”

With a sigh, Double Trouble dropped a bundle of notes on the table. “Oh, very well, your highness. Bear in mind, though, if we don’t get them to Apocyn, we’re going to be persona non grata with some fairly hostile people.”

Adora raised her hand. “I think we should do it. As far as it goes, compared to some of the stuff we’ve already done, this is actually working in our favour – it’s better equipping the Apocynians to resist the Horde in future, for one thing.”

 _And I might be able to figure out what the voice in my head wants_ , she didn’t say, because why the hell would you?

“You have a point,” admitted Glimmer, and turned to one of the drones. “Entrapta, what’s the best way to get to Apocyn from here?”

“It’ll take a while,” said Entrapta thoughtfully. “It’s a bit off course for our destination in Brightmoon, but not too far…I might be able to shave a bit with some careful jumps. It’s also got some really interesting First One ruins, so I hope we get a chance to go look at them!”

“All right, then,” said Glimmer decisively. “We’ll head to Apocyn. _But -_ ” She held up a warning finger. “I really do mean it, Double Trouble – _tell me_ before you sign us up for smuggling rings. I don’t want you to come back from a mission and tell me that we’re contractually obligated to assassinate a Horde admiral or enlisted as privateers for the Pirate King of Piscia or something.”

“It sounds like everything is at least sorted for the moment,” said Bow from the galley, “so let’s have our _other_ reward for a job well done – it’s not gonna stay hot forever.” He emerged, carrying a metal box with him; judging by the thick layers of fabric on each hand, it was extremely warm.

When placed on the table and opened, the contents turned out to be disc-shaped, and were a golden-brown colour with – from the looks of it – some sort of reddish-orange filling. It smelled _amazing_.

Bow grinned. “Who wants some pie?”

Better late than never indeed.

* * *

Curled up in her bunk, mask tucked away in a drawer, Catra seethed.

Sure, someone like Scorpia was probably an improvement on the dozens of spit-and-polish officers the Horde had, but…Shadow Weaver apparently thought so little of her that she could be kept in line by the Horde’s least competent Force Captain. It was yet another stark reminder that only Adora mattered to her.

Adora. Just the name grated on her at this point. Ditching her once could perhaps have been justified, but twice? That wasn’t coincidence.

Still, she knew she’d see Adora again…

…and next time, she’d be flying a Predator.

She’d show them. She’d show _everyone_. Adora, Shadow Weaver, Lonnie – they were all going to regret underestimating her. Looking down on her. Dismissing her.

She smiled grimly and drifted off to sleep. Payback wasn’t much of a lullaby, but it would do for now.


	4. Cats and Mice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The _Protector_ and the _Fright Zone_ arrive at the rain-soaked neutral planet of Cenzos. While Bow investigates the local Horde presence, Catra tracks down Adora.

Cenzos hung before them in space, a blue and grey jewel against a backdrop of stars, a patch of silver filigree marking the current location of the orbital dock. From the looks of it, a really big storm was raging on one of the northern continents; luckily, the biggest spaceport was to the south. The blue-tinted light of its star glinted on the silver-grey sphere that Entrapta never seemed to leave.

“You’re sure that it’s neutral?” asked Adora, to a chorus of sighs.

The loudest was from Glimmer. “For the fifth time, Adora, yes, we’re sure it’s neutral.”

Adora looked down. “Sorry. It’s just…it feels weird to have neutral territory this far inside Horde space.”

Glimmer’s voice was sceptical as she asked, “The Horde really didn’t tell you about this?” She looked down. “I suppose it wouldn’t have. The Horde’s control over its ‘space’ weakens as you get further from the nearest portal gate. If a planetary government isn’t pro-Horde, it can stake out a neutral position – we should be able to find a few sympathisers there.”

* * *

The drone’s single violet eye studied Bow carefully as he closed the casing of the arrow and began to seal it with his multitool.

He looked up. The drone, a maintenance design, was about eight inches in diameter, and stood on four simple legs in what everyone called the ‘droneways’ – a network of passageways throughout the ship, allowing the tiny machines to reach important areas quickly. This one was leaning out through the access port in what was, at this point, essentially Bow’s workroom.

“Entrapta?”

“Hi Bow!” Bow wasn’t entirely used to talking to Entrapta through the drones – he’d always preferred to be face-to-face with people – but if it made Entrapta more comfortable to stay in a pod and communicate entirely by proxy, that was really her business. “What are you working on?”

“New arrow design.” He shifted to a different gadget on his multitool and began applying the fletching. “In theory, it’ll produce a strong enough EMP to knock a Horde skim-tank out of the fight for at least ten minutes.”

“Do you use a bow so you can do things like that? I’d been kinda wondering…”

“Partially, yeah.” He put down the multitool. “Energy weapons are loud, they’re obvious and you can’t really turn down the deadliness. The bow’s a lot quieter, and with specialist arrows, I can do all kinds of things that something like Glimmer’s carbine can’t.”

“Got any really interesting ones?” said Entrapta, anticipation running through her voice like current through a wire.

“I’ve made a few that I’m proud of, yeah.” He pulled out a few arrows. “This one’s designed as a line-layer. The gravity clamps at the end are strong enough to hold like three people’s weight, and it’s got some stealth features so I can use it in tight spots. I wish I could fit more cord in, though; to get a decent length, it had to be pretty thin. It’s strong enough to work, but you really need some special gloves to climb it if you don’t want your hands to get cut up.”

“And this one?” The drone pointed at the pile of arrows, and Bow lifted up one with a large, angular structure at its head, covered in circular speakers.

“Sonic arrow. Goes off on impact, or I can set a timer. It has a few different sounds programmed in; I’m trying to figure out which ones are most useful.”

The next arrow had a long, cylindrical structure with a rounded end instead of a standard head, and the shaft was inscribed with an elegant filigree of circuitry. “This one’s a bug arrow. I’m still working on it.”

The drone perked up. “What kind of bug? Like, a cool beetle?”

“‘Bug’ as in listening devices, Entrapta.” He gestured to the tip. “This has little gravity clamps and some auditory sensors; the shaft doubles as a relay antenna that can reach an orbiting ship. But the sensors are really fragile, so it has an effective range of about three feet; you kinda have to just drop it and hope for the best. Also, I really need to work on the encryption.”

“It also looks kind of obvious,” observed the navigator.

“That is another issue, yeah.” Bow shrugged. “The mark one design had a flashing red light on it. Still don’t know why I thought that was a good idea.” He cleared his throat. “So, what about you – got any projects underway? There must be a ton to do around here.”

“I’ve been studying that First Ones crystal you brought back from Tobis.” Bow had almost forgotten about it in the excitement. “I think I can integrate it – and hopefully other First One tech – into our systems. The potential is _amazing!_ ”

“Really? What do you think you can do with it?”

“Practically anything!” The drone was actually scraping its little feet against each other in a pantomime of glee. “First, I wanna see what it can do for AI. This one piece is so dense in processors that I can probably squeeze down a human-level core until it could fit into a fighter, for example.”

That was _absurd_. The computer core on a fighter was generally pretty utilitarian – good for sensors and trajectories and firing solutions, but unlikely to have opinions about literature or have anything interesting to say – and part of that was that you couldn’t fit a truly sophisticated AI. It took a much larger ship to mount a human-level core. Even the _Protector_ barely had the capacity (although without any prisoners, they could possibly add some additional processing later).

“First One tech is really that powerful?”

“It’s way more powerful than that! I just wanna start with what I know!” A rattling sound told him the drone was vibrating with proxy enthusiasm. “Not much First One tech really works these days, but some of what I’ve seen it do makes even the best Horde and Territories equipment look like flint and tinder!”

“I’ll keep an eye out for any First One stuff when we’re on missions. More pieces will let you learn more, right?”

“Right! Thanks!”

* * *

The air smelled of new-fallen rain as Adora surveyed the city.

Most of Cenzos had a very damp climate, and Spire City had been built to make the most of it. The looming grey shapes of many of the buildings were broken up by water channels, which glowed blue, and the streets and gutters had clearly been designed to cope with heavy rainfall – particularly since the city was built on the coastward edge of a mountain range, and as such some of the outlying districts had pretty steep streets (although at present they were in the middle of town, which was fairly stable).

Further distancing it from Adora’s experience of Horde urbanisation, the wide streets were lined with reddish-purple trees, their leaves folding down from the stem to shake off the rain. As Adora watched, a small squadron of drones – sleek, wasp-like designs, with clawed limbs and scissored mandibles – descended on one and began pruning.

That being said, she couldn’t dwell on the city for too long. She needed to be on her guard.

“I wish I had my gun,” she grumbled. “I feel kind of naked without it.”

“Well, we’re not allowed to bring them, so deal with it,” Glimmer told her bluntly.

“Bow got to bring his weapon!”

“No, Bow got to bring his _sporting equipment._ ”

“What’s the difference?”

“The difference,” hissed Glimmer, “is that if you go around calling it a weapon and not sporting equipment, they’ll make him put it back on the shuttle.”

“It’s peace-bonded anyway,” Bow added. “Cenzos customs is _thorough_. If you did have a gun with you, it’d probably be sealed in six inches of lead or something.”

Glimmer’s expression turned calculating. “How difficult would the lock be to open – if, say, they had some technical issues at an entirely legitimate sporting establishment? You know, just hypothetically?”

“Just hypothetically?” Bow’s eyes flicked around the street, as if he was afraid a dozen Cenzos security agents were going to burst out of a drain or something and arrest them if he gave the wrong answer. “Well, it’s a pretty cheap lock.”

“Guys?” cut in Entrapta over comms. “Emily’s picking up some Horde signals approaching. It’s…it’s the _Fright Zone_.”

Glimmer muttered something under her breath; Adora suspected it was ‘piss’. Then, suddenly, her mood lightened, and she pointed to a patch of weather-worn graffiti. “Rebel sign. Come on, we might have some friends nearby.”

* * *

“Attention, _Fright Zone_. This is Cenzos control. Please state your business.”

The comms officer flinched as Shadow Weaver glared at him, but Catra grudgingly admitted that he steadied himself well. “We are pursuing fugitives, Cenzos control – dangerous criminals.”

“The Horde does not have that authority on Cenzos, _Fright Zone_. We _will_ defend our sovereignty if necessary. You may not capture fugitives until they leave Cenzos orbital space.”

“Cenzos control, we have orders to do whatever is necessary to recover these fugitives-”

A beeping issued from elsewhere on the bridge, and the tactical officer said, struggling to keep her voice level, “Multiple target locks from ground and orbital platforms. We’ve been painted, Commodore.”

The voice of Cenzos control, apparently confident that the threat had registered, cut back in. “Then we would recommend telling your superiors that waiting until they leave Cenzos orbital space is _necessary_ , _Fright Zone_.”

“And if they decide to stay on Cenzos indefinitely?”

“Then that will ensure they cannot commit further crimes in Horde space, _Fright Zone_. Your superiors will have to be satisfied with that. If they contravene local law, they will be dealt with appropriately, which _may_ include extradition if it is deemed necessary.” Cenzos control was beginning to sound notably aggravated, which was probably not what you wanted from traffic control. “Do you have further business in the system, or will you be moving on?”

Shadow Weaver pondered this for a few moments. As Catra’s heart climbed steadily closer to her throat, the witch hissed, “Get us onto that planet.”

“May we put in for fuel, supplies and R&R, Cenzos control?” asked the comms officer.

“Certainly, _Fright Zone_ \- as long as your crew abide by local laws.”

“Do you have a data packet on those laws, Cenzos control?”

“Transmitting.” The voice of Cenzos control seemed a little less hostile. “Don’t start any trouble and we won’t finish it.”

“Understood, Cenzos control.”

As the channel cut out, Shadow Weaver turned to Catra.

“You’re not going to do what they said,” said Catra bluntly.

“Of course not.”

“Great. And if this starts a war?”

“If this starts a war,” Shadow Weaver shot back, “I will make sure that you face the appropriate consequences.”

It took Catra a couple of seconds to process the implications of that. “Wait, me?”

“Your mission is still to recapture Adora, child,” said Shadow Weaver, her voice a venomous hiss. “She’s on that planet – in the capital. Do not return without her.”

Catra had spent years working on striking the exact right level of disrespect in her salutes that she didn’t get in trouble for them. She gave one of her best now, before heading for the elevator away from the bridge. “I’ll go prep.”

“Oh, and Catra?”

Catra turned back to look at Shadow Weaver.

“Wrap up warm.” Shadow Weaver had adopted a particularly cloying faux-maternal tone. “It’s rainy down there; you’ll catch your death.”

Catra didn’t bother responding to that, although the temptation to say _I’d rather catch yours_ was almost irresistible.

* * *

In a dingy tavern back room, Adora, Bow and Glimmer were having an extremely important meeting.

The apparent head of the rebel cell – Elaysia, according to Glimmer – was a Salinean woman, mid-depth if Adora was any judge. Her skin was blue, with a green pattern on her face and torso, and a green-tinted fin rose out of her blue-black hair and swept back along her spine. Her silvery eyes studied them curiously, and then she gave a polite nod. “Princess Glimmer. Your mother is well, I take it?”

“She was last time I saw her,” said Glimmer. Adora could tell she was trying to suppress some tension in her voice, and if Adora could tell, the Salinean woman probably could too. “We’re currently headed to Apocyn, and we put in here so we could take on supplies and get some fresh air without needing to worry about arrest.”

“That Horde carrier is on your tail, I assume.”

Glimmer bowed her head. “I’m afraid so.”

“We shall have to do what we can to work around it,” said Elaysia with a surprising amount of calm. “It may be that we can help each other. How are you on a stake-out?”  
Bow stepped forward and said, “I’m probably the one you want for that, ma’am.”

“Excellent.” Elaysia pulled out a datascreen and began displaying news items and unredable diagrams. “We have reason to believe that one of the local generals has been suborned by the Horde. We need to know what the two of them are up to, and why.”

“Ma’am?” The speaker was a hulking reptilian, clearly a member of Rogelio’s species and the first rebel other than Elaysia they’d seen. “Horde troops have begun arriving from that carrier.

Elaysia made a wordless noise of frustration and said, “We need eyes on them. If Grizzlor can use them in whatever he’s planning, this could get very ugly, very quickly.”

“Adora, this one’s on you,” said Glimmer decisively. “Take my scanner-” she handed Adora a device resembling a more high-tech set of binoculars – “and find somewhere with a good view of the port. Bow, you and Double Trouble are on Grizzlor duty. Elaysia and I will figure out some contingencies in case the shit hits the circulator.”

* * *

From her vantage point, Adora scanned the street. Scattered, unarmed Horde troops lurked in dry spots or endured the rain as best they could – except a few of Salinean extraction (Adora thought she recognised Octavia among them), who seemed to be enjoying themselves. Honestly, she could see why; somehow, the Horde environment controls always managed to be a little too dry and a little too humid simultaneously, and that must be worse if you were naturally suited to an atmosphere with a bit more moisture.

(In hindsight, for people who made a big deal about every species having its own true place, the Horde sure seemed to love cramming a whole bunch of different aliens into conditions that weren’t particularly pleasant for any of them.)

Adora had staked out a position on the top floor of a medium-sized building – some kind of shopping complex, from the looks of it – and found a little sheltered nook that had a good view of the street outside the port and kept the rain off. She was making detailed mental notes as she observed the shuttle-loads of Horde troops filtering out into the city; she didn’t recognise all of them, but she could definitely see a few people she’d met before around the place – even Kyle and Rogelio seemed to be out and about, presumably enjoying some time out of Lonnie’s presence.

She hadn’t seen Catra yet, and that worried her. Worst-case scenarios kept popping into her head – Catra lying in the wreckage of a destroyed Carnivore, Catra pushing Shadow Weaver too far, Catra trying to make her own exit and getting caught – and she had to keep forcing them down and reminding herself that if anyone was going to be okay, it was Catra. Catra was tough, resourceful, cunning-

“Hey, Adora,” said a familiar voice right next to her ear, and Adora dropped the scanner. After a few moments, she heard a tinkling sound from below.

* * *

The Horde “embassy” was more like a private fortress, located slightly out of town, set into the side of a mountain. The nice thing about the alpine setting was that, since the surrounding area hadn’t been landscaped much, there were some great hiding spots within the rough topography. Some of them were even big enough for two people on a stakeout, especially when one of those people was Double Trouble and had apparently never heard of personal space.

Bow extracted himself from underneath Double Trouble – the shapeshifter was trying to use him to prop up their scanner – and tapped the comm earpiece Elaysia had given him. “Got anything useful from the telemetry?”

“Nothing,” said the earpiece, in a staticky version of Elaysia’s voice. “These are all General Kur’s troops, but we knew that already. We need something unambiguous.”

“Darlings.” Double Trouble was smiling in that way they had that reminded Bow of some kind of predatory animal – a swarmfin, perhaps. “Conspiracy is one of my specialities, and watching for minor irregularities isn’t going to blow it open before next year. We need to get inside there.”

The shapeshifter pressed the scanner into Bow’s hands. Before he could protest, Double Trouble had vanished.

He sighed heavily. “I hate it when they do that.”

“Do what?”

“Double Trouble’s decided they want to take a more hands-on approach.”

There was a brief pause, and then Elaysia muttered, “Crap.”

“I can safely say that _Double Trouble_ will be okay, but they’re…kind of unpredictable, and they’re not exactly a team player.”

Elaysia thought for a moment, and then said, “You’ll have to extract them. We need answers, not explosions.”

* * *

Adora managed to find her words again.

“Catra!”

“No need to sound so surprised,” said Catra smugly. “I got the same training you did. This is the kind of building you’d use to keep an eye on things, and after that stunt you pulled, I figured you’d want to keep an eye out.” Her eyes flicked up and down Adora’s body, taking in her new clothes. “Can’t say I think much of your dress sense, but I suppose you had to make do with what you could steal. Tsk tsk. What would Shadow Weaver think?”

“These clothes were supposed to help me go unnoticed. So much for that, I guess.”

“I’ve known you for my entire life, Adora. I’m not gonna be fooled by a change in hairstyle.” Catra smiled thinly, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Now, Shadow Weaver wants a word with you. She was _very_ disappointed to lose you.”

“I’m not going back to Shadow Weaver, Catra. I can’t go back to the Horde, not now. Not after what I’ve seen. The Horde’s evil-”

“You don’t get a choice. She told me to bring you back, no matter the cost.”

“Please, Catra.” Adora reached out a hand. “You don’t have to do what she says. Come with me-”

“I see how it is, Adora!” Catra snarled. “When it’s useful to _you_ , it’s _oh Catra, we’re friends, come with me_. I’m only supposed to be there when it’s convenient for you, is that it?”

“I couldn’t-”

 _I couldn’t risk you being killed if it went wrong_ , she meant to say, but she didn’t get the chance.

“You could have and you didn’t, Adora. Don’t bullshit me. Now are you going to come quietly, or am I going to have to get creative?”

“You can’t just drag me off the planet, Catra-”

“Oh, Adora. I thought you would have learned by now.” Catra put her teeth on full display. “It’s only against the rules if you get _caught_. And I don’t see any sensors around here…how about you?”

“It doesn’t have to be this way, Catra. Please.”

“It _didn’t_ have to be this way. But it’s gonna be.” The seeming friendliness had been entirely drained from her voice; all that was left was venom. “The time to beg me to come with you? It was a while ago, Adora. You missed it. Now you get to be dragged before Shadow Weaver in cuffs.”

Okay. Reasoning with Catra wasn’t working.

Plan B. Did she have one?

* * *

Bow pulled on his gloves and tested the cord. His mightiest pull couldn’t shake it loose, so the gravity clamps were obviously working; it was always a bit nerve-wracking when you couldn’t hear them come online.

(At the same time, if he _could_ hear them at this distance, they would probably register as an earthquake on the fortress’s sensors. That would have been bad.)

“Here goes nothing,” he muttered to himself, and began to climb. One of the nice things about the gloves was that they took a fair bit of the effort out of it, and even then, scaling a rope that long was exhausting, and he was breathing heavily by the time he reached the sentry post he’d aimed for.

The door was locked, but some very brief work with his multitool fixed that. It opened to reveal a long, winding staircase, presumably an artefact of the

The sound of footsteps from below told him a guard was approaching, so he ducked through the first door he could.

Moments later, he ducked back out of the door and began to run. The room had contained five Horde soldiers in the middle of changing into their duty uniforms; he wasn’t sure what the _absolute_ stupidest conditions in which to be caught were, but standing in a Horde dormitory watching them get dressed had to be up there.

This was going to be tricky.

He ducked through another door – this time the one for a janitor’s closet – and reached into his quiver. There had to be something useful…

* * *

Adora’s eye fell on the door she’d used to get up there in the first place.

Plan B.

“Sorry, Catra. If you’re going back to Shadow Weaver, you’re going back alone.”

Adora launched herself at the door like a sprinter going for first place, plunging through it sideways as it slid open, Catra hot on her heels. She vaulted a hover palette covered in boxes; Catra ploughed through it in a hail of what Adora would later learn was breakfast cereal. The barrage of profanity from the Plumerian pushing the palette echoed around them.

A left, a right, another left, down an escalator, and Adora found herself in front of the entrance to a clothing store. She plunged in.

* * *

“He’s gotta be in here somewhere,” grated the Horde sergeant, a pale human with their dark hair done up in a tight bun, as they scanned the small armoury. “We didn’t see him get past us, and Orma’s squad hasn’t seen him higher up the stairs, so there’s nowhere else he could be.”

There was a loud crashing sound from downstairs, and the officer muttered something rude. “Bastard must have slipped past us somehow! Come on, if we don’t find him Grizzlor will have our heads.”

As they tromped out of the door, Bow – awkwardly wedged behind a weapons locker – breathed out in relief. The sonic arrow he’d hidden in the janitor’s closet had gone off on schedule. He pulled himself out, gave a 45-second wait to allow them to head down the stairs, and began scurrying up. With luck, he could find a Horde uniform or something, or at least a better hiding place-

As he turned a corner, he spotted a Horde uniform. Five of them, in fact. Their leader, a tall reptilian with a Horde insignia painted on their forehead, was holding a combat rifle; in moments, it was pointed at him.

He raised his hands, and said, in a resigned tone, “You must be Orma.”

* * *

Catra sniffed loudly as she stepped into the shop. Adora had managed to give her the slip while she’d recovered from crashing into the palette, but the scent trail had led her here.

“Hey, Adora,” she said in a sing-song voice. “You know you can’t hide from me. What was your plan, lurk in here until closing time?”

“Nope.”

Catra spun around at the sound of the voice, only to see a rack of clothes descending upon her -

As Adora, who had pushed the rack over onto Catra, bolted, the Horde cadet snarled out some of the worst words she knew and tore through the pile of dresses she’d found herself under.

Adora was going to pay for this.

* * *

Grizzlor, the Horde commander slash ambassador, was a member of a species Bow wasn’t immediately familiar with. He was huge, with a carnivore’s teeth and a thick coat of shaggy brown hair; he had a sort of jollity to him, but it was little more than a veneer, and something in his stance told Bow it was a veneer over a blunt willingness to kill – an eagerness, almost.

“So you’re the one who broke in,” he said. “You got guts, kid, I’ll give you that. If you talk quickly, I may not have to show them to you.”

“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to, say, explain your entire evil plan before you kill me?” said Bow.

A grunt of laughter burst from Grizzlor’s jaw before he could suppress it. “Very funny, kid. I ain’t some villain from a kid’s holoserial. ‘Oh Mr Spy let me tell you about what me and General Kur have cooking’ I _don’t_ think.” He snorted in disbelief. “And I’m not gonna throw you in a death machine that don’t work either.”

Bow tested his restraints. They were pretty tight, but perhaps he could use them as a club in a pinch-

“Look, kid,” said Grizzlor, picking Bow up by the front of his shirt. The big man barely had to exert any effort to do so; Bow felt a sudden kinship with groceries. _Light_ groceries. “You’re gonna tell me everything you know, all the rebel secrets you got, and then I’m gonna give you the mercy of a quick death. There’s no room for debate in this; you’re gonna talk, and that’s gonna be that-”

The door swung open.

“Sir?” said the Horde soldier who was standing in it. “Something’s come up.”

Grizzlor scowled. “Look, I told you. I don’t wanna be interrupted while I’m working a prisoner over-”

“You should _really_ listen to this, sir.” The soldier held up a datascreen and fiddled briefly with the controls.

Grizzlor’s voice issued from the speaker. “-ain’t some villain from a kid’s holoserial. ‘Oh Mr Spy let me tell you about what me and General Kur-”

The big man’s jaw dropped. Bow had always thought that was just an expression; not any more. “What is this?”

“It’s being broadcast over half the planet, sir. News programs are having a field day. There’s open war in the streets. It’s over, sir.”

The next sound Grizzlor made was closer to the sound of a furious animal than any actual word. His eyes began to redden, and a shiver crawled up Bow’s spine as he saw the intent to kill in Grizzlor’s face-

“Oh, _fine_ ,” said the Horde soldier, and their stun prod lashed out into Grizzlor’s side. The ambassador staggered under the impact, and before he could recover, another strike caught him on the back of the head.

Bow picked himself up and turned to the soldier. “Are you who I think you are?”

“And who do you think I am…darling?” Black light flared, and Double Trouble fiddled briefly with Bow’s cuffs, causing them to swing open with a click. “Very sloppy work, getting caught. I am impressed that you managed to conceal a transmitter from the Horde, though. Usually, their searches are pretty thorough.”

“I don’t have one on me, DT. I don’t know how-”

Bow’s eye fell on his quiver, sitting at the desk just outside the cell. As he watched, the bug arrow rolled off the desk and fell to the ground with a clatter; the hum that immediately followed it told him the gravity clamps had just come online (he made a mental note that the gravity clamps were too loud), and the two of them really did not have time to disengage them.

Bow’s mind raced. “Do you think you could pull off a convincing Grizzlor?”

The shapeshifter’s smirk was wide and sharp. “He’s not a challenge, darling. I could fool the man’s own mother.”

“I don’t know if he had one. The Horde steals kids, remember?” Bow grabbed a traditional, pointy-tipped arrow and tested the edge. This needed to _look_ really bad without actually doing much damage. “I always used to be picked for Tree #1 or Dead Body during school plays when I was little. Never thought _that_ would come in handy…”

Double Trouble’s eyes flickered wider as they realised what Bow was getting at.

* * *

Catra began to recite every profanity she knew in alphabetical order.

She’d lost Adora as the streets had dissolved into mayhem. Planetary forces were clashing with each other, a few Horde troops and local civilians had weighed in – where they’d gotten their weapons, Catra wasn’t sure – and anyone smart had already found somewhere safe to hide.

“Bastard, bugger, crap – hey!”

“Sorry, darling,” said the person who’d bumped into her – a green-skinned, whip-slender reptilian alien, towing a dark-skinned human in their wake. The human had apparently taken some punishment recently, since his white crop top was tattered and soaked in blood; possibly some injury sustained in the fighting. “Better get to cover – that uniform’s going to make you a target before long.”

“Thanks,” Catra said bitterly. The human seemed familiar, somehow, but she couldn’t place where…

Too late, just a moment too late to viably pursue them, she realised where she’d seen the human before.

In briefings on the runaway _Constrictor_. She’d just walked past Commander Glimmer’s right-hand man and _not noticed_. Now, there were a dozen streets they could have gone down, and the sound of combat was getting near, and anyway the rain was beginning to fall again, so it wasn’t like she could sniff them out – the scent would just be washed away, as would any footprints. And the green one hadn’t been wrong; from the picture she had of why the firestorm had begun, it was because the local commander had let his ambition override his good sense.

Oh, well. Lonnie had sent the signal. Plan B had worked, at least. Sure, Plan A had been a trash fire from beginning to end, but she hadn’t had much time to plan and she’d been on enemy territory and in any case it would have been fine if Grizzlor hadn’t screwed it up.

* * *

“So then Double Trouble carried me out, pretending to be Grizzlor disposing of my corpse in person,” finished Bow, wincing at the memory of having his fresh scratches bounced against the shapeshifter’s shoulder. “We managed to get through the city pretty much unscathed.”

“I’m not sure about your methods or your results,” said Elaysia flatly, “but you did accomplish the mission, at least.”

“I’m sorry,” Bow said, his voice solemn. “I hadn’t actually planned on a mass broadcast; my transmitter came online, and Entrapta sent it out on an open channel. Have many people died?”

“Fewer than we’d feared. Kur wasn’t ready to make his move yet; his troops were too scattered to put up too much resistance against the loyalists. Nobody can find Grizzlor or Kur themselves, though, and some ships were stolen. I suspect those to be connected.”

“At least they’re off the planet,” offered Glimmer.

Elaysia nodded. “As I said, you did accomplish the mission, and our allies in the government are rooting out Kur’s traitors. I just…wish there had been another way.”

“So do I,” said Bow softly.

* * *

“I told you not to return without her.” Shadow Weaver’s hair writhed like a nest of snakes, and her hands clenched into fists.

“And if Grizzlor hadn’t screwed up I wouldn’t have!” fired back Catra.

“I should have expected your failure, Catra! You have _always_ been a failure-”

Catra smirked at her. “Would a failure have gotten a tracker onto their ship?”

One of the few things Catra admired about Shadow Weaver was her ability to go from fury to calm and vice versa in seconds; when Catra was mad, it tended to linger. It took only a few seconds for Shadow Weaver’s hair to stop writhing. “A tracker, you say?”

“I had Lonnie find their shuttle and plant a spy drone on it.” The spy drone, a rounded, vaguely spiderlike machine, had initially been clamped to the underside of the shuttle, where it could pass as part of the machinery, but had probably started trying to find a good listening position by now.

Shadow Weaver evaluated this. “Your mission was still a failure…but not, perhaps, an unmitigated one.” Her voice turned to steel. “Make no mistake, though – next time, you _will_ succeed, or you will face the consequences. Lord Hordak is less forgiving than I.”

“Who’s Hordak?” blurted out Catra before she could stop herself.

Shadow Weaver flinched.

It was barely perceptible, but she flinched. Catra’s eyes narrowed.

“The identity of Lord Hordak,” said Shadow Weaver imperiously, “is none of your concern. You may rest assured, however, that he ranks far higher than you, and receives _detailed_ reports on your mission – failures included.” She picked up some paperwork, apparently at random, and shuffled it in her hands. “You may go now.”

Catra’s head was humming with the implications of that as she fled.

 _She didn’t mean to blurt out that name_ , she thought. _Whoever Hordak is, she didn’t want me to know about him. Which means that whatever she wants Adora for, it’s classified…_

_…Which means that if this goes to shit, I’m going to be up to my neck in it._

Perhaps it was time to start buddying up with the new Force Captain. Sure, if this Hordak character was able to boss around a commodore, the protection of a Force Captain probably wasn’t going to accomplish much, but it was better than nothing.

* * *

Adora was stuffing a bag full of clothes when she heard a knock at her door.

The knocking proved to be coming from Glimmer, who was standing in the corridor with Bow. Those lilac eyes flicked to the bag, and Adora could see the question forming in Glimmer’s face.

Adora decided to cut straight to the point, and said, “I can’t stay here.”

“You seemed so keen to stay last time,” said Bow. “Did something change?”

Adora opted to study the floor. “I got to talk to my best friend from the _Fright Zone_. Shadow Weaver is after _me_. Personally. I should get out-”

Glimmer reached out a hand towards Adora’s shoulder; at Adora’s flinch, she lowered it again. “I said you could leave if you wanted, and I meant it…but do you _want_ to leave, or do you just think you _should_?”

Adora could only blink in confusion.

Glimmer thought for a moment and offered, “If Shadow Weaver was just after the ship in general, would you want to stay aboard?”

“Yes.”

“Then you should stay,” said Glimmer simply.

“But Shadow Weaver-”

“We’re going to be in the firing line no matter where you are, Adora. Bow and I are still wanted for all that scourging the starways I’ve apparently been doing, Perfuma and Mermista were taken as hostages, Entrapta stole this ship…”

“Plus,” Bow threw in, “we did just blow open their bid to take a neutral world from the inside. That probably didn’t make us any friends in the Horde.”

“That too.” Glimmer’s body shifted as she took a deep breath. “The point is, splitting up isn’t going to make us any less a group of targets; it’s just going to mean that if we do get shot at, we can’t help each other.”

Adora turned this over in her mind like a jeweller studying a ring, before she nodded. “You’re right. I’ll stay.”

After a few moments, Bow said, “Did you want to talk about your friend?”

Adora’s eyes flicked downwards again. Her voice hardly above a mumble, she said, “I don’t really want to talk about anything.”

“Sure.” He nodded gently. “But if you ever do want to talk…just let me know, okay?”

“Okay. I will.” Adora looked at the bag. “I should unpack. See you guys at dinner?”

“See you then, Adora,” Glimmer said, smiling faintly.


	5. Dark Ships and Dark Stations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When a potential ally turns out to be less than trustworthy, Mermista has to save the ship, and by doing so, an entire city. By herself. With whatever she can get her hands on.

“Excuse me, Mermista,” said Perfuma politely, “but I do need those tools.”

“I’ll be done in just a sec. Maybe a minute. Or ten. Actually, come back in half an hour.” Mermista scratched her back theatrically with the claw thingy – cultivator, it was called a hand cultivator – and smirked at Perfuma. Eventually, she was going to find the Plumerian’s breaking point. She’d already managed to push Adora and Glimmer to it, and Double Trouble had proven willing to return fire; she’d stolen some furniture from the shapeshifter and risen the next morning to find a bed crammed up against her cabin door. Perfuma was proving a tough nut to crack; so far she’d stolen furniture, reprogrammed the environment settings in Perfuma’s room to replace the incense smell with fermenting cotton candy, not that she had any idea why that was even an option, and deliberately cranked one meal up to the point where even she had trouble handling the spice (not that Glimmer or DT had noticed any of it). Perfuma hadn’t reacted.

Before she could figure out a new escalation, though, Entrapta’s voice echoed over the comms. “We’re just about to arrive at Gedav. I’ve wanted to see the starcloud here for years, it’s gonna be so cool.”

Not that Mermista cared, but she did look through the porthole in her lodgings as they emerged from jumpspace into the Gedav system. The starcloud – a quirk of the universe that stretched across multiple systems – added a vast, red-tinted pattern to the background radiation, essentially an aurora multiple light years across.

It was, indeed, pretty cool.

* * *

The term, Adora had learned, was “dark station”.

They had started moving back into Horde-controlled space. After a lengthy debate, they had concluded that sticking to fringe systems wasn’t going to work; it’d be too slow and too predictable. However, they were still pretty far from a portal gate, so the system wasn’t exactly a Horde stronghold.

Thus, dark stations. They tended to be located in the outer system in these tenuously-held areas, shielded from Horde detection through distance, careful positioning, and a few delicately applied bribes. Dark stations could be anything from rebel outposts to, more frequently (at least according to Double Trouble), wretched hives of crime and malevolence, a concept the shapeshifter appeared to be entirely on board with.

This one, in the Gedav system, was an irregular array of domed cylinders connected by metal tubes, built into the side of an outer-system asteroid. Inside, it had a lot of what had once been stark white synthetic materials, built with rounded edges and a lot of transparent components, but proper cleaning and maintenance were apparently low priorities – most of the transparent parts were cloudy, and the white panels were covered in grime and fingerprints, and the air filtration system was clearly not running at 100%, judging from the smell.

Adora hated it.

The Horde had been very intent on keeping its ships clean. Even the _Protector_ , far from the perpetually spotless installation the Horde demanded, had a cleaning roster and regular filter checks. This kind of irresponsible housekeeping made her worried about other matters: how reliable was the reactor core, if they took this approach with the rest of the station?

“You’re sure there’s a rebel presence here?” she asked, studying a wobbly-looking piece of machinery carefully. After a moment, it fell off.

“The graffiti for it was really fresh. Possibly the freshest bit of paint this place has ever seen, honestly.” Glimmer reached out to operate a door control panel, reconsidered, grabbed an arrow from Bow’s quiver and pressed the buttons with that instead. “Come on, there has to be someone around here.”

Mermista turned to Double Trouble, who was scratching themself furiously. “You good?”

“Trade secret, darling-” The scratching became more intense. “All right, fine. I’m moulting.”

Glimmer grimaced and said, “Oof, I hate moulting. It’s bad enough just on my back.”

“The back is the worst part.” A dark aura surrounded the shapeshifter’s hands, and suddenly their arms were at least a foot longer. “Thanks for reminding me, by the way, your highness,” they added sourly.

* * *

Daily affirmations finished, Scorpia opened the door to her cabin and was immediately greeted by a now-familiar sight: a short, wiry figure with untidy hair and mismatched blue and gold eyes.

“Oh, hey, Catra. What’s up?”

Okay, so _technically_ she was supposed to be all ‘report, soldier’ and all that, but she’d never had the knack for that. Besides, she liked to think people responded better to a less disciplinarian approach.

Catra studied her for a moment before saying, “Now that…” Her tail twitched; Scorpia had thought that meant agitation, but she’d never met another member of Catra’s species, so she couldn’t be sure. “Now that things are changing, I wanna start getting ahead. And you made Force Captain, so…you must be doing something right. I was hoping you had some advice.”

Could it be?

“Oh, gosh,” managed Scorpia, her voice suddenly thickening. “No-one’s ever wanted to be _mentored_ by me before. Of course I accept! I’ll teach you everything I know!”

“I hope hugging isn’t on the Force Captain test,” said Catra sourly, from within Scorpia’s embrace.

* * *

The purple-skinned woman was tall, and she had the build of someone who develops muscles for use, rather than display. It took Adora a few moments to realise the white patterns on her skin were tattoos; the giveaway was a design on her left bicep showing a Prime head on a spike. Her red hair was shaved into two ridges in a sort of double mohawk that left her pointed ears clearly visible. If Adora had to guess, not that she was good at that, she’d estimate the woman was somewhere in her thirties.

She was mostly wearing black, with a magenta trim on the shoulder boards, lapels and collar of her sleeveless jacket; its two columns of dull metallic buttons lent it a vaguely military air. The only non-practical ornamentation was a necklace on a thin silver chain; from the looks of it, a simple holo-image projector.

“Name’s Crita,” she said brusquely. “Who the hell are you?”

“Glimmer.”

Crita let out a guttural chuckle. “Really? _You_? Hey, Optikk, get a load of Shortstuff here. The Horde’s been quaking in their boots for months over _this_.”

Optikk pointed his one huge eye in Glimmer’s direction, but said nothing. So far, that was a consistent pattern with him. The alien had a hulking build and was overall clad in a sort of shapeless dark grey exoskeleton, decorated only with a reiteration of the Prime head motif, picked out on his breastplate in dull magenta. So far, he’d been silent, but whether he was unable to speak or simply chose not to, Adora had no idea.

Glimmer was beginning to redden with a mixture of embarrassment and anger. “We were _hoping_ to trade services for intel and supplies, although if you’d prefer to be assholes, I can always try somewhere else.”

“Sorry,” said Crita, although she didn’t sound very sorry. “I _might_ have something for you. I’d need to take a look at your ship, though; our needs are a little specific.”

“We’ve tweaked the interior layout quite a bit,” said Glimmer. “The prison transport layout isn’t exactly designed for long trips, you know? Come aboard and have a look.”

Crita’s eyes narrowed. “I gotta do some checking first, and you guys probably need a rest. First thing tomorrow morning – station time?”

* * *

“So, the first thing about being a Force Captain,” said Scorpia, “is that you need to act decisively. You can’t sit around too long thinking things over; you’ve gotta act!”

“Decisively,” said Catra, her expression unreadable. “Sure. I can do that.”

“Squadron Leader! We’ve got a response from the tracker!”

Catra visibly perked up and moved swiftly through the consoles of the intel room until she found the speaker: a tall, heavily-built scorpioni with an inadvisable man-bun. “Tell me it’s somewhere close.”

“Very, Squadron Leader. We could get there in one jump. We just need to pick a system.”

“The one _they’re in_ , idiot.” Catra rolled her eyes theatrically, and Scorpia suppressed a chuckle. That wasn’t quite what she meant.

“I mean, Squadron Leader…” The scorpioni paled. He probably wasn’t any lower a rank than Catra technically held, but the Horde’s gossip held that _somehow_ Catra had been given an important job from Shadow Weaver, and nobody wanted to risk annoying the commodore. “I mean that they’re in the starcloud. We can’t get a fix on them. Best I could narrow it down to was either Terzos or Gedav.”

Catra thought for a moment. “Terzos. Easier to hide in the crowds, more important installations to attack. Gedav has a population of like ninety and a magnesium refinery; it was barely worth the effort of taking it.” She pointed, apparently at random. “You, go tell the navigator to lay in a course. You, go tell Shadow Weaver.”

Both of the nominated soldiers saluted and ran.

* * *

Mermista opened her eyes to find herself slung casually over a burly reptilian shoulder.

From the sound of the footsteps, there was a guy in front of them, and her captor was at the back of the admittedly short line. Her hands and feet were tied, but it felt like ordinary cord, rather than cuffs.

After a moment, it came back to her. During the tour, Crita’s goons had gone for stun nets and prods. Double Trouble, despite how smug they could get about how good they were at reading people, had been suckered just as easily as the rest of them; either they were a jackass or moulting had thrown them off their game. Presumably, since the floor still looked familiar, Crita’s goons had taken over the ship; she could hear the distant sound of the jump engine, so they were in flight.

She took a moment to take stock. Her trident was gone, obviously, and her wrists and ankles were wrapped in cord that was just a little too tight, but they hadn’t taken any other steps. Obviously these jerks didn’t know much about Salineans.

Her hair-tendrils began to uncoil themselves, undoing the ponytail and reaching down to where Mermista could see a knife hilt. They plucked it from the scabbard and slid it inside her clothes, the touch of the cold metal reminding her of the water back home.

“I don’t like this,” said a reedy voice from ahead, and Mermista sagged, just a little bit, to keep the appearance of being unconscious. Her hair-tendrils writhed as they twisted themselves back into the ponytail. “These guys are just kids – I have a sister about this one’s age. And we’re gonna steal their ship and dump them on the side of the road on Terzos.”

“The boss wants the ship, so she’s gonna get the ship, Grall.” Only a few reptilian species had the right mouths to speak Galcommon, but Mermista’s dad had kept pushing her to learn languages. “So we’re gonna stick fish girl here in the cell, and we’re gonna drop her off, and you’re not gonna whine like this to the boss.”

The cell.

The _Protector_ had, essentially, three decks: the docking/cargo bay and storage rooms on the lower deck, the bridge, crew quarters and galley at the front of the upper deck, with the engineering rooms toward the stern, and the central deck had originally been cells and guard posts. As the drones had been rebuilding as they went, that had changed a bit: most of the upper deck had been rebuilt into cabins, with environmental controls and proper storage space as opposed to reconditioned dormitories and locker rooms – a few more cabins than they technically needed, honestly – and the core of the central deck had become water storage and purification, plus the biobay. This meant she was somewhere on the central deck.

The reptilian dumped her unceremoniously onto a prisoner’s bedding, and she grunted from the impact.

“Think she’s waking up,” said Grall, unnecessarily. He leaned over Mermista. “Look, just…stay here and don’t make trouble, OK?”

“Aww, and I was planning to, like, catch a movie today or something,” she said.

Grall glared at her as he stepped out into the corridor and left. She raised her voice and called after him, keeping her voice as flat and emotionless as possible, “I could give in to space madness any minute, you know. I hear the voices already-”

The door slid shut.

She counted to five. Now for that knife.

* * *

The Terzos capital city was probably better thought of as two cities. The inner sections were new: archaic structures swept away by the Horde’s modernising programs, replaced with prefabricated towers of white and green – the only thing distinguishing them from any other Horde outpost was that, due to the underlying geology, they had to be a little shorter than was standard. The outer rings hadn’t yet received this, and many of them still looked old – brick, stone and even wood instead of metal or synthetics, built into hexagons and connected by narrow little bridges. The roads were a bit of a skitlet warren, too, a far cry from the straight lines of the inner city.

Still, Scorpia had to admit, there was a kind of charm to the older stuff. A few neat little flourishes, carvings, that sort of thing. She wouldn’t mind if Horde architecture got a bit more interesting, honestly. It could be so hard to find the right building when they were all so similar, although that might have been a side effect of living on a ship. She paused to look at a particularly neat-looking wall decoration –

“What a dump,” said Catra, who apparently did not share the sentiment. “Adora’s gotta be here somewhere; Shadow Weaver’s not going to be pleased if we miss her.”

“Right. Adora’s here somewhere. That rascally Adora isn’t going to get the best of us!” She blinked. “So, who’s Adora?”

Catra went through about five facial expressions in thirty seconds before she said, with exaggerated patience, “The traitor Shadow Weaver wants us to catch. About this high, dirty blonde hair, she was wearing red with a blue jacket last time I saw her.”

“She must be important if an entire carrier is being diverted to look for her.”

“Yeah,” said Catra, in a voice like she’d found gravel in her ration bar, “and someday I’m gonna figure out why.”

* * *

Massaging her wrists, the now-severed cords dumped unceremoniously on the floor, Mermista studied the wall. From the faint skittering sound she could hear, there was a droneway behind it. She leaned her forehead against the wall and said, as loudly as she dared, “Entrapta?”

After a moment, there was a clang from the wall, much like the sound you’d get if a drone headbutted the corridor wall. Almost exactly like that, in fact.

“Are there assholes near you so you can’t talk? Once for yes, twice for no.”

Clang.

“Is anyone else free? Once for yes, twice for no.”

Clang. Clang.

“Can you get the door to my cell open?”

Clang. Hiss.

 _Okay_. Now they were getting somewhere.

“Is the crawlspace open?”

Clang.

The crawlspace was a secondary set of maintenance entrances, designed for human-sized and smaller operators. They were a little bit of a tight squeeze for Mermista, who was on the bulkier side for a humanoid, but she could get around them. They couldn’t get her inside any of the cells (because the Horde weren’t stupid; no sense giving prisoners a way out), nor could they get her into any of the cabins (because the rest of the crew weren’t stupid; they had assumed she and/or Double Trouble would use them to play pranks, which Mermista had to admit was perfectly fair).

Still, they could get her around the ship. Right now, that was valuable; she wasn’t going to get far just marauding along the corridors with a knife like a monster from a slasher holo. This was a job for fighting smart.

* * *

“Are we sending this with them?” asked Grall, studying the biobay.

The biobay was quite a large room, well-lit, full of pipes and waist-high metal garden beds. The plants in the beds were growing well; some were even starting to develop buds, and one was adorned with a small coating of deep red flowers. There was also a collection of smaller plants in ceramic pots, mostly flowers; the tray they were mounted on was humming faintly, so presumably it had some light gravity clamps to protect the plants from incidental turbulence or minor mishaps.

“I mean, they worked hard on this stuff,” continued Grall. “The Horde doesn’t use biobays, so this all has to be custom work. Think the boss cares?”

The only answer Grall received was a sensation not unlike that of a blow to the head with a length of pipe.

* * *

Mermista flapped her hand in the air as the guy collapsed. Unlike her trident, improvised though it was, which had at least been designed to fit into her hands pretty well, the length of pipe she’d found in the crawlway just transferred the impact from each swing directly into her wrists, which were still not entirely happy with the day’s affairs.

“How the hell did you get out of your cell?” growled a worryingly familiar voice from the door.

Oh, right. The idiot had a friend. A very large, scaly friend.

“I turned into a skitlet and dug my way out,” said Mermista drily. Stepping forward, she swung the pipe down like she was testing her strength at an amusement park -

The pipe _thunked_ into the big reptilian’s hand, and she ripped it from Mermista’s grip in a flowing but extremely strong motion.

Oh boy.

Mermista ducked out of the way of the return swing, desperately trying to find an outcome here that didn’t end with Imprisoned In A Cell 2, Concussion Edition. The plants, no; they weren’t sturdy enough to make good weapons. The crawlspace, no; getting into them could be a little fiddly, and she wasn’t going to have a chance while being attacked with a length of pipe. Her eyes flicked around the room…

There.

As the reptilian stepped forward to take another swing, Mermista hurled a ceramic pot into her face, shards of kiln-baked clay and clods of dirt scattering everywhere. She blinked stupidly, apparently stunned for a moment by the impact, as Mermista grabbed another one and smashed it into her head as hard as she could muster.

“The boss likes caramel,” said the reptilian woman, her eyes beginning to cross, and then she fell over, the pipe clattering to the floor as she dropped it.

Mermista bent to pick it up. The dents where the reptilian had been holding it would make a slightly better handgrip, at least.

“Sweet dreams, assholes,” she muttered as she ducked back into the crawlway entrance. Two down. She had no idea how many to go.

After a moment, she ducked back out again. The human’s wrist communicator would probably fit her…

* * *

“Scorpia, I gotta ask you something.”

Scorpia fumbled the binoculars out of her claws; they glinted mockingly in the sun as they descended four storeys to the ground. “Uh, sure! As long as I’m allowed to tell you. That’s Force Captain lesson two, by the way; need-to-know basis. You only tell people things they need to know.”

There was the faintest hint of scorn in Catra’s voice as she said, “You once spent an hour telling the entire squad about the time someone threw a mud pie at you on Geroga.”

“And you all needed to know about that!” said Scorpia, without a trace of irony. “Anyway, what was your question?”

“Does the name Hordak mean anything to you?”

Scorpia tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Is that the system near Melendia – no, wait, that’s something else. Nope, can’t say it rings a bell. Why? Where’d you hear it?”

“Shadow Weaver.” A faint shiver crawled up Scorpia’s spine; everyone was just a little bit afraid of Shadow Weaver. “I don’t think it’s the name of a system, though; the way she was talking about it, it sounded like the name of a person. Someone high-ranking enough to give orders to a commodore.”

“The only people who can boss a commodore around are Primes. And Primes don’t really have names beyond, well, Prime – and a serial number.” Scorpia’s eyes widened as inspiration struck. “Maybe it’s a translated serial number? Like H0RD-4K or something?”

Catra gave this due consideration. “You might be onto something. Is there any way you could check – see if you could learn anything? It’s probably gonna be important to the mission.”

“I can try. Can’t make any promises, though.”

* * *

Mermista peeked through the airflow vent carved into the crawlspace entrance. Another team of two; apparently Crita believed in the buddy system. This time, they were a human female and a member of some semi-insectoid species – short orange hair, pale yellow skin, wings, and the light blue armband of an ythman from Velavel. (Hadn’t one of the others mentioned someone else from that species on Velavel? Oh well, she couldn’t exactly ask.)

At the moment, they were checking through the supplies in one of the still-extant armouries; since everyone else had moved to keeping their own preferred weapons with them, or nothing at all in Perfuma’s case, the armouries were basically just boxes they used to hold the stun prods and other Horde equipment they didn’t consider important enough to keep with them. The human was checking the power cells of a stun prod; her companion was discovering that the riot vests were too large for xem.

Her stolen wrist communicator chimed loudly, and Crita’s voice issued from it. “Grall? You should’ve checked in five minutes ago.”

Shit.

Well, she’d always believed in making a virtue of necessity. She lunged through the door, bringing the pipe across in a brutal sweep that toppled the human, who was closest to the entrance.

The insectoid darted back, xer eyes – set with a patch of silver hexagons instead of an iris or pupil – boring into Mermista. Xe reached for xer own wrist communicator, stabbing for the buttons. Xe ducked around Mermista’s next swing and yelled, “One of the captives has escaped! Send backup-”

Finally, Mermista managed a hit, sending the alien flying into one of the corners of the room, but the damage was done. The alien’s communicator buzzed, and Crita’s voice demanded, “What’s going on down there?”

Mermista knew, intellectually, that she should just leave. There would probably be more coming along soon, and the less Crita knew about what was going on, the better.

While she was reasoning this out, however, her mouth said, “Yeah, uh, xe can’t, like, come to the comms right now? Xe’s taking a nap.”

“Oh, it’s you.” Crita’s voice had an edge of frustration to it. “The Salinean. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to surrender and save us all some effort?”

“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to get off our ship and save me some effort?”

There was a crackling sound as the communicator shifted frequencies. “All operatives, the Salinean captive has escaped. I want everyone on guard. Step up patrols.”

That sounded like Mermista’s cue to leave. She just needed to take care of one thing first.

* * *

“Look, Salinean, we’re not going to hurt any of you,” said Crita, her voice distorted slightly by its passage through the communicator network. “We just need your ship, that’s all. Terzos is kind of a hub, you should be able to get transport from there.”

Mermista braced herself against the corridor wall. “See, the problem there is that I don’t believe you? If it was that easy to get a good ship on Terzos you would’ve done it yourself.”

“Not a _Horde_ ship. Civilian transport, yeah, but you can’t exactly buy these on the open market, and we need something decently-sized that looks like a Horde vessel.”

“Sorry. My bad. I’ll put you in for, like, a knighthood or something.” Mermista smirked – wasted effort, since the communicators were voice-only. “Might be a while before you get it, though; Brightmoon is a long way off.”

“Not that it’d be helping any of us even if it was closer,” snapped Crita. Mermista instinctively flinched back, just a bit; Crita had gone from conciliatory to furious in moments. “All Brightmoon cares about is Brightmoon.”

“Oh boy, touched a nerve there. Did you wanna talk about it?”

“Not with you.” The anger in Crita’s voice had dimmed, but it hadn’t left. “The only reason Salineas is better is that it doesn’t pretend to believe in anything.”

“Touchy. Look, I gotta get back to work. Talk again sometime?” Without waiting for an answer, Mermista pulled off the wrist communicator and dropped it down a nearby shaft, the unit bouncing off the walls on its way down. A distant crackling sound and a thud told her that someone had reached the armoury; as she’d hoped, the stun prods she’d rigged to go off when disturbed had been disturbed and had gone off.

* * *

“I can talk to you now, by the way,” said a drone, its voice carrying Entrapta’s nasal edge, as Mermista straightened up the pipe. “Now that we’re in jumpspace and can’t change trajectory, I think they figured I didn’t need much more supervision, so there isn’t anyone around the navigation pod. They talked a lot about their plans, and I tried to point out the problems, but they just weren’t listening.”

“I’m guessing they’re not stealing our ship because they needed a birthday present at short notice,” commented Mermista. She had just finished knocking another two of Crita’s goons unconscious with the pipe in the docking bay, and one of them – a member of a humanoid species she didn’t recognise, with a lot of exposed cranial bone – had left her weapon in rather bad shape.

“No.” Mermista’s blood ran a few degrees colder; no digressions, no distractions, no geeking out about something. Entrapta was taking this seriously; she sounded angrier than Mermista had ever heard her. “They want to wipe Emily, fill the ship with explosives and slam it into the Horde citadel on Carreros Delta.”

All Mermista could manage was, “Mother of the deep.” She couldn’t even manage sarcasm; the scale of the potential disaster was too great.

The Carreros Delta installation was a linchpin for the entire sector, apparently – Glimmer had been studying it for a while. A sector’s worth of information flowed through it, including the security data for the portal gate. It would definitely be a priority target for any self-respecting rebel cell…except that it was also located in the centre of a sprawling city, and any strike powerful enough to destroy it would probably be a dire threat to that city.

And with the amount of room for bombs in a Horde prison transport, plus the likely speed of impact, the explosion could be enormous if Crita was investing heavily in it. Even the Horde didn’t use kill vehicle strikes like that on planetary installations outside of emergencies. The _Protector_ ’s explosive demise would be like a direct strike from a decently-sized meteorite: not an extinction-level one, but bad enough. Miles around the impact site would be devastated; if it kicked up a lot of dust, it could also wreak havoc on the ecosystem, probably cause global cooling.

At the absolute minimum, Crita was planning to wipe a city off the map.

Mermista rallied herself and forced the look of dumbstruck horror off her face. Thankfully, everyone except Entrapta was otherwise occupied and would never realise she’d allowed something to disturb her perpetual look of boredom. She cleared her throat. “That’d suck. We’d have to get a new ride, for one thing.”

“So you’re going to stop them? I really hope you can stop them. They already shut down all the security drones; I only have a couple of maintenance ones left running, and I don’t wanna risk them opening up any cells until I know it’s safe for them.”

“I’ll, like, see what I can do, I guess.”

A gasp sounded over the drone’s speakers. “You should take Noelle! She’s been needing a stress test for a while!”

Mermista’s brow furrowed. “Who’s Noelle-”

At the whir from behind her, she turned around and found out. For the second time in as many minutes, sarcasm failed her.

“Yeah. That’d be cool.”

* * *

Vekt idly scratched one of his scalp ridges as the elevator ground to a halt. This ship had really large elevators, presumably so they could fit a prisoner and a full armed escort in.

“Stop doing that,” rumbled his scorpioni friend, Talus.

“Thanks, dude,” said Vekt, forcing his hands down from his head. His allergies were acting up, probably from an air impurity, and he’d asked Talus to stop him from scratching; the ridges provided important cooling, and too much scratching could damage the outer layer and cause problems. He pulled out his net-thrower and made sure it was loaded. “That escapee’s gotta be around here somewhere.”

The cargo bay was large, and while it was mostly empty, there were some patches of scrap metal, stockpiled supplies or landed ships – a Carnivore and an in-system shuttle. If their quarry was in here, she was presumably in one of those areas, to provide a harder target-

A hulking shape loomed out of the pile of scrap metal and disused bulkheads in front of them, and Talus was hurled back like a rejected cannonball.

Vekt fired, but the net just hung off the shape, sparking slightly but otherwise not managing anything. Slowly, too slowly, he reached for the stun prod at his hip -

Quitting time hit Vekt like a bag of hammers, directly in the face.

 _At least it wasn’t the ridges_ , thought Vekt, and darkness claimed him.

* * *

“I think we gotta get some paint,” said Mermista, hefting a large metal barrel from the supply stockpile and testing its weight. “Yellow is _not_ Noelle’s colour.”

Noelle had started life as a standard-issue Horde exoskeleton – a labour tool designed for moving heavy objects – but Entrapta had given her a bit of a tune-up. Quite a lot of a tune-up, actually. Mermista had tried the standard model during the early stages of their travels, and Noelle was a _lot_ more flexible: the joints were much more flexible and less stiff, and the pilot had a canopy instead of being totally exposed. Most of it was covered in the black and yellow hazard markings of the original design, while the rebuilt parts were generally dull metal.

“Are you sure? I haven’t made any upgrades to the core, so I can’t ask her what colours she – oh, you were being sarcastic.”

The elevator door hissed open, and Mermista threw the barrel. It would have weighed at least as much as she did, probably more, and here she was throwing it overarm, like she was going for the winning throw in a game of gravball. It hit the elevator with an extremely loud noise, and coolant began to dribble out through the open door. Strangely, it looked like it was empty-

As Optikk appeared as if from nowhere and struck, lightning crackling across Noelle’s chassis and sparks scorching Mermista’s skin, Mermista realised that the crawlspace hadn’t exactly been limited just to her. Her thumb brushed the eject button, and she burst from the metal and starglass cocoon, trying her best to turn in mid-skid. It didn’t quite work, and she slammed into a bulkhead that was awaiting Entrapta’s attention. Her shoulder complained, but from the feel of it, it was at best a bruise – and she didn’t really show those anyway.

Optikk rose from the toppled heap of Noelle; from the looks of it, some of the motivator systems had burned out already. The alien was wearing a bulky pair of gauntlets, crackling with energy discharges – definitely a nastier shock than a stun net or a Horde prod, neither of which would likely have gotten through Noelle’s chassis. He’d probably had a rough time getting through the crawlspace; they’d been hard enough for Mermista, and she hadn’t been wearing armour.

Speaking of Horde prods, she drew the one she’d claimed back in the armoury. Without the length of pipe, which had at least given her a decent amount of reach, she was going to have to do this a bit more up close and personal. That thought wasn’t a pleasant one; those gauntlets looked painful.

She tuned out Entrapta’s complaints about the damage to Noelle. That was a thing to worry about later. Right now, she had to not die.

* * *

Mermista had studied a bit of boxing while growing up, at her father’s instigation. This was going to be nothing like boxing. For one thing, blocking these fists, these ozone-scented fists, with any part of her body was going to accomplish less than nothing.

Also, she wasn’t going to get in trouble if she cheated.

“So. You’re Optikk.”

Optikk said nothing.

“Gotta say, I’m not loving the accommodations. We kinda took over the ship so we wouldn’t have to sleep in those tiny little cells. I know you’re guests, but we’d have prepared you some quarters if you’d told us you were coming.”

The silence continued.

“Look, this is a pain, you know? Making fun of the things people say is kinda, like, my jam, and I can’t really do that if you’re not gonna say anything. There oughta be a rule.”

Optikk’s only reply was to slam his electrified fists together with a sound like distant thunder, and then begin his charge.

He was quick for his size, but that was okay, so was Mermista. She spun out of the way of his first blow, before diving past the second. She tried a probing strike with the prod, but he blocked it with one fist, before bringing the other around in a thunderous haymaker that would have probably broken something if he’d connected.

She definitely wasn’t going to win this on skill, and from the way he’d taken out Noelle so quickly, he had the edge in brute strength. Also, he had armour and she didn’t. But she did have the home-field advantage. Yay for that. At least she’d know where she got knocked out. As she ducked and weaved and leaped the occasional barrier that didn’t slow Optikk down at all, she studied the area. Over _there_ was the wreck of Adora’s fighter, covered in a tarp, and over there was a stack of coolant barrels…

…and over there were some pipes, built into the wall.

She thought back to the redesign meetings she’d reluctantly taken part in. There had been pipes run down from various storage areas into the docking bay, in order to resupply the vehicles that would in theory be in there someday.

She changed her path, drawing Optikk over towards the pipes. She needed to keep him distracted, though – couldn’t risk him realising what she was doing – so she fired up the one weapon she knew she could rely on: her mouth.

“So, like, what’s your story, Optikk?” she began, stepping out of the path of a vicious left hook. “What drives a man to a life of piracy and silence? Trouble at home, maybe? Bad childhood? Got a thing for the boss?”

That got a reaction: the barest flinch. She was probably going to feel bad about pressing on this point later, but at least she could do so with the majority of her organs intact if this worked.

“She’s not gonna sleep with you, dude. Especially if you’re not gonna say anything to her about it. But then, saying things isn’t, like, your strong suit, is it?”

There was a sound of static from Optikk’s neck, and Mermista realised he was using a translator unit. That was the equivalent of clearing his throat.

It wasn’t worth the wait, though.

“Shut up,” buzzed Optikk, taking another swing that Mermista barely evaded.

Yep, definitely touched a nerve there. Now to twist the knife, at the risk of mixing metaphors. “Sure you don’t wanna switch sides? Don’t get me wrong, Crita’s, like, kinda pretty, but she can’t hold a candle to a goddess like me, you know? Also everyone on this ship is a lot less likely to do, like, mass murder or barratry or wearing that jacket in public.”

“SHUT! UP!” Optikk’s translated voice was a synthetic scream, a buzzy undertone still audible under the rage. (That kind of emotional response was an expensive feature on most translators; Optikk apparently came from money.) He lunged forward, murder in his eye, his fist headed straight for Mermista’s face. She dived out of the way, and the crackling fist struck the pipes like the fury of an angry god. There was a sound of metal tearing –

\- and the water circulation pipe ruptured. A cataract burst from the damaged pipe, catching Optikk full in the front. After a few moments, a smell of ozone and smoke filled the air as the gloves shorted out, dumping their full charge into their user.

When the emergency shutoff kicked in, a few seconds later than Optikk no doubt would have liked, Mermista tried a few of the standard areas for checking a pulse. She found one. Optikk was still alive, although she didn’t envy how he’d feel when he woke up; if she was any judge, every muscle in his body was going to hurt after that one.

“Shoulda just asked her to dinner,” she managed, breathing heavily. She raised her voice and said, “Entrapta, how’s Noelle?”

“Servos are wrecked, but I’ve got replacements.” The nasal voice came from above, and indeed there were several maintenance drones coming along to close the still-leaking pipe. “She’s not going to be up and about for a while, though.”

“Great. Just me and this stun prod, then.”

One of the drones hopped off the wall and studied the fallen figure of Optikk. “Maybe not. I’ve got about a million ideas about what we could do with some of the parts from these gauntlets.”

“Probably just stick to the fastest one,” said Mermista drily. “Give us time to set the tables for more company.”

* * *

Crita emerged from the elevator with a thunderous expression, death in her eyes and a snarl on her lips.

“You,” she said, punctuating it with the crack of her knuckles, “are more trouble than you’re worth.”

“There’s no need to flatter me, Crita,” Mermista shot back, “my pants are already off.” She lifted the weapon Entrapta’s drone had hastily assembled for her: one of Optikk’s gauntlets, rigged up to a small power pack and mounted on the end of a length of pipe for an improvised, electrified club.

“This isn’t some _joke_ , Salinean-”

Mermista donned her smuggest smile. “Yes it is. You were planning to take out a city with these chumps? I should just give up. That’s funnier than anything I could say.”

“We weren’t-”

“Were you gonna just dump us out of the ship in a heap, or was the plan to call the Horde on us? Just think how many people you could’ve hurt with the reward money.”

Crita’s eyes flashed. “I would _never_ betray a rebel to the Horde-”

“You’d just sit us there on a platter so you could go RKV a city. What was your plan to minimise civilian casualties, just out of curiosity? Careful aiming? Praying really hard?”

That did it. Crita’s eyes were burning with rage. “I shouldn’t have expected any better from any of you,” she said, her voice a low hiss. “ _All_ the Free Territories are cowards. Brightmoon, Salineas, Geluregnus, Plumeria – nobody’s strong enough to do what needs to be done. Everyone just cowers in their homes and goes on and on about securing their own borders, and the Horde just does whatever it wants!”

“So instead of letting the Horde kill innocent people, we should let you do it instead. Gotcha.”

“They’re not innocent,” growled Crita. “They’re Horde. If they cared, they’d rise up in force, drive the Horde out. But they don’t. They just-”

“They just _don’t_ kill millions of people. How unfair of them.”

“You don’t _get_ to judge me!”

With that, Crita lunged at Mermista, and the battle was on.

In theory, when one participant in a fight has superior reach, they have a key tactical advantage, since they can attack while the other cannot. Mermista’s club, for example, should have allowed her an edge in this encounter, allowing her to strike at Crita without exposing herself to Crita’s fists.

Theory, in this case, was reckoning without Crita’s sheer speed. Mermista tried to bring the club around, but instead of hitting Crita with the business end, she only managed a glancing blow from the haft against Crita’s shoulder before the weapon was torn from her grip.

She was definitely outmatched. The larger woman was strong, and she was quick. It was mere moments before a trickle of magenta blood was dripping down Mermista’s face. Then Crita grabbed Mermista’s wrist and _twisted_ –

Mermista stifled a cry of pain as her right arm broke. She fumbled with her intact arm, found the handle of her club and jabbed it into Crita’s stomach, driving the alien back, but she didn’t have the leverage to really lift it with one arm out of commission – it was a _lot_ heavier than her trident – and it clattered to the floor.

She ducked under Crita’s next blow, grabbing at the woman’s necklace, trying to get something, anything to happen, but the cheap chain gave way almost immediately, and she stumbled back, the projector at the end clenched in her one functioning fist.

The broken chain rattled against the floor, and Crita stepped away, fear in her eyes. “Okay. Look. Please. I’ll stop. Just…just don’t damage it. It’s…please.”

Mermista also stepped away, right arm hanging limply by her side. She examined the projector. “Oh? This thing’s that important to you? Whatever’s on here has to be real interesting…”

Crita’s eyes were wild as Mermista thumbed the activation stud.

Light flickered, and a short holorecording started to play on loop. It showed a family of humanoids with purple skin, clad in unadorned robes in shades of brown and cream, smiling at the camera. There were two mothers, one short and with a simple white braid, the other tall and with an asymmetrical bob, her hair a bright flame red. The short one, who was smiling broadly, had her hand resting on the shoulder of a red-haired child, probably no more than eight; the tall one was holding a cloth-wrapped baby, her scalp covered in tiny white bristles of hair, and wearing a faint but visible smile.

Even Mermista, never exactly known for her sensitivity, could tell there was genuine love in their expressions, and genuine pain in the one Crita was wearing now, and so there was only a little snark in her voice as she said, “Happier times?”

“My family.” Crita just sounded exhausted, like she’d been running on adrenaline for months and had finally run out. “The Horde came _days_ after this was taken. I lost them all. Both my mothers. My sister. Gone.”

“Just think, after you hit Carreros Delta, you can meet them in the Lands Beyond and tell ‘em you were really sad about it, so you killed a whole bunch of people just like them, and now everything is okay.”

Crita lurched forward, but her legs refused to support her, and she sank to her knees. “I can’t…I have to stop them. If I don’t, the Horde will…”

“Will do exactly what you’re about to do? Or wait, no, even the Horde doesn’t slam exploding ships onto civilian targets.” Mermista knew she was laying it on a bit thick, but also she didn’t care – her arm hadn’t magically gotten less broken. “You’re actually gonna do something the Horde won’t. There should be some kind of prize for that.” She thought for a moment. “Carreros isn’t even near here. How were you even going to get the ship there?”

“We have a contact in the black market on Terzos. They were going to wipe the computer and fake some portal gate codes. I had it all planned out. It was going to work, I’d thought of everything…I’d thought of almost everything.” Moving like a marionette with frayed strings, she activated her wrist communicator. “All operatives. Stand down. I’m calling this off. Let the captives out of their cells…and get out some medical supplies.” She raised her head, but didn’t meet Mermista’s gaze. “Including a splint.”

Mermista felt her own adrenaline ebb. “Look, if it helps…a lotta us lost someone to the Horde. My mom. Glimmer’s dad. Adora never even knew her family.”

“That’d be easier,” said Crita, her voice thick. “Wouldn’t have to miss them that way. I just…”

“Yeah. I know.”

Neither of them spoke for the several minutes it took for a Plumerian in black and magenta clothes to get there and splint Mermista’s broken arm.

* * *

“About time, darlings,” said Double Trouble, a sour note in their voice, as Bow and Adora pulled off the stun nets. DT had been cocooned in the things. “I’ve been alternating between itchiness and unconsciousness for hours.” Their hands came up to their face-

Adora could have gone her whole life without seeing what came next. At the touch of Double Trouble’s claws, the top layer of their face began to peel off, ghostly green shreds hanging in front of their chartreuse eyes. She’d seen Rogelio in moult before, but he’d generally shed individual scales, leaving him piebald. This was something quite different.

“Oh, here we go,” said the shapeshifter, visibly relieved, and headed for the door. As they left, they commented over their shoulder, “If anyone needs me, I’ll be in my quarters finishing up this moult, so they’ll just have to carry on without me. I know it’ll be difficult, but I’m sure you can manage it.”

“I’ve heard some species eat their shed skin when they’re finished with it,” said one of Entrapta’s drones cheerily, as Double Trouble’s ham-acting faded into the distance.

Bow shuddered and said, “I didn’t need that mental image.”

* * *

“Well, that was a waste of time,” grumbled Catra as the _Fright Zone_ headed for Gedav. “There has to be some way to set up the transmitter so that it can get better data through a starcloud. It’d save us a lot of this bullshit.”

“Well, it wasn’t a complete waste, right? We got to know each other better, had a good time, learned something – no day’s a waste if you learn something!”

Catra looked at Scorpia like she’d grown a second head. “What?”

“Well, we learned that, uh.” She thought for a moment. “We learned that your Adora person wasn’t there?”

Catra made a low and frustrated noise, like she was forcing down a groan.

It would probably have made Catra very angry indeed to know that the _Protector_ would arrive in the Terzos system ten minutes after they left.

* * *

A warm smile adorned Glimmer’s face as she stood outside Mermista’s cabin.

Mermista’s face lacked similar adornment. “Oh. Hey. Sparkles.” Her free hand tapped against the cast; her right arm was going to be out of commission for a while. “Need something?”

“I wanted to thank you. Both in an official capacity as, I guess, the captain…and in an unofficial capacity.” She looked Mermista right in the eyes. “You saved our asses today, Mermista. We owe you big time.”

“You’re, uh, welcome, I guess.”

Glimmer turned to leave, then reconsidered. “If I can just ask one question…why?”

Mermista looked blankly at her.

An awkward cough burst from Glimmer before she could suppress it. “You’ve told us repeatedly that you’re not part of the Rebellion. You’ve deliberately antagonised nearly everyone on this ship. You could have let them steal the ship and nobody would have known you had a chance to stop them. But you didn’t. You risked your life, got the shit beaten out of you in the process. You couldn’t even have known what she was doing when you broke out. Why?”

“Just ‘cause I’m not, like, part of your rebellion, doesn’t mean I don’t care about people, Sparkles.” She smiled faintly; it was the first time she’d given Glimmer a genuine smile. “And just ‘cause I mess with you guys doesn’t mean this ship isn’t my home.”

“All right.” Glimmer executed a formal bow. “I’ll be sure not to underestimate you in future.”

“You should probably, like, not underestimate anyone in future? Underestimating Crita is how we got into this mess in the first place.” Mermista thought for a moment. “Where is she, anyway?”

“Her troops are recovering in the medbay or sleeping in some of the cells. Crita herself…well, I last saw her handing Double Trouble some money and getting a flask off them in exchange.”

Mermista groaned. “Bastard’s operating a still.”

Glimmer’s hand came up, and she pinched the bridge of her nose. “Bow had a look around. Actually, they’re running three. I didn’t even know Horde rations _could_ ferment.”

“I had some the other day. I’m still not sure they can.”

That got a laugh. “Fair enough, Mermista. You get some rest. You went through hell for us today, and I’m _not_ gonna forget it.”

“In a minute. I have something to take care of first.”

* * *

“Hey.”

Perfuma turned around to see Mermista standing in the door to the biobay. The magenta shade of her cuts and scratches reminded the Plumerian of their captors.

“Yes, Mermista?”

The Salinean studied the floor. “Sorry I…smashed some of your pots and junk,” she said, sounding like the words were being extracted by a dentist. “I didn’t have a lotta other options.”

Perfuma blinked. “You were trying to save the ship and our friends, Mermista. You didn’t have to apologise…but I appreciate it.”

“Okay. Bye.”

As Mermista left, there was a clatter, and Perfuma looked down to see a hand cultivator lying on the floor.

The lights shifted and dimmed, showing that the ship’s night cycle was online, and Entrapta’s voice echoed over the onboard speakers. “We’re gonna head in to Terzos tomorrow morning. For now, I’m taking us into the outer system so we can get some sleep without interruptions.”

Then Mermista popped her head back through the door. “By the way, the code to reset your environment systems is five-one-four-beta-one. You know, in case you didn’t want the cotton candy smell.”

“Thank you, Mermista,” said Perfuma, choosing not to mention that Entrapta had reset it a while ago. “How are your injuries?”

A grimace appeared on Mermista’s face. “Arm’s definitely broken, but we Salineans get over those pretty quickly.” Her voice shifted, gaining a flirtatious edge; from the look in her eye, though, Perfuma could tell it wasn’t intended seriously. “So if you’ve got any rewards for the big hero, they’re gonna have to wait.”

Perfuma smiled gently. “Goodnight, Mermista.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That family photo is not important and nobody in it will be relevant ever, honest.
> 
> This one took longer than I was expecting, because as well as a bunch of stuff happening in that grim dimension known as Real Life, I realised about 3K words in that it would be way more interesting on board the _Protector_ rather than some random space station.
> 
> Thanks for reading, check out [curiousscientistkae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/curiousscientistkae/pseuds/curiousscientistkae), [EtherianFrigatebird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EtherianFrigatebird/pseuds/EtherianFrigatebird), and [Say_Anything](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Say_Anything/pseuds/Say_Anything) if you haven't already, and keep watching the skies!


	6. (Imaginary) (Friends)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catra hunts down Adora on Terzos.

_Adora._

Adora sat bolt upright in her bed. It had been long enough since she’d heard the voice that she’d almost written it off as a manifestation of how stressful the transition from “loyal Horde soldier” to “rebel pilot” had been.

“Who are you?” she said, before realising that talking loudly to your hallucination in the dead of night was probably considered rude to the people in the surrounding rooms. She moved to a whisper. “Who are you?”

_I am Light Hope, emissary of the First Ones. It is my task to guide you to the correct path. You have a great destiny ahead of you, Adora – greater than you can possibly imagine._

“Why am I special? I’m just-”

_You are ‘just’ the one who is destined to save us. You must bring balance to the universe. So much depends on you._

“And I do this on Apocyn? Why Apocyn?”

_You must make sure the Plumerian enters the First One structures there._

“You need Perfuma specifically?” A note of suspicion crept into her voice. “What for?”

_It is necessary-_

“Adora?”

Adora blinked as the vision departed. (Actually, could it be considered a vision if she didn’t technically _see_ anything?) “Bow?”

“You were talking in your sleep. Is everything okay?” Even in the dim running lights of the cabin, she could see the honest concern in his face.

“I’m fine. Just a dream,” she said. She couldn’t tell whether she’d intended it as a lie or not.

* * *

The _Protector_ came in to rest in the Terzos spaceport and disgorged a group of people in black and magenta. Some of them were limping, obviously favouring one side or the other; some others were obviously concussed, staggering and squinting, held upright by concerned friends. Optikk, at their head, was clearly struggling to keep on an even keel. None of them were exactly pleased, and several looked furious, but they had their orders; say what you will about Crita, she commanded loyalty.

Glimmer stood on the entrance ramp and watched them go.

She turned to Crita, who was looking blearily across the docking bay. “Are you sure none of them will betray us to the Horde?”

“They’re still rebels,” slurred Crita. “They’re not gonna sell you out. They’re better ‘n’ that. Better ‘n’ me, too.” She shook out the flask that had been her companion for a while now; a few drops of grey-brown liquid splashed on the ramp. “’m gonna go find a bar now. Good luck, Shortstuff. Have a nice life.”

“Crita-” But what could she say? Crita had taken her moment of clarity pretty hard, and Glimmer had no idea what, if anything, she could say to help. After a moment, she settled for, “Don’t do anything rash?”

But Crita was already gone.

* * *

A quartet of suspicious eyes glared through the crack in the door at them, their owner blinking them in sequence: first the upper pair, then the lower.

“I’m not openin’ this door,” hissed the shadowy figure; their voice had a faint rattle to it, like shaking a canister of spray paint. “The Horde just had a carrier here lookin’ for you folks. Somethin’ you did stirred ‘em up, an’ the best thing you can do is lay low, get what y’ came for, an’ get out afore they come back.”

The door slid shut.

Glimmer turned to Adora. “The _Fright Zone_?”

“Probably, yeah.” Adora’s features twisted into a grimace. “It wouldn’t be so bad if I know what the big deal was, you know? Why apparently a carrier is worth it to capture a half-dozen escaped prisoners, and why I’m apparently so critical that Shadow Weaver wants me specifically. I wasn’t anyone important. Just a Squadron Leader.”

Bow, who was standing behind them, reached out as if to rest a gentle hand on her shoulder, seemingly remembered her thing about being touched, and withdrew it again. “Everyone’s important, Adora-”

“Not to the Horde,” said Adora flatly. “Going to this kind of effort to recover a Squadron Leader is like…okay, Crita was going to steal our ship to hit a major Horde facility, right? Imagine she was instead planning to take out a single solar panel with it. That’s what chasing us in a carrier is like.”

“It couldn’t be something else?” asked Glimmer. “You didn’t see anything that could be, I don’t know, compromising? Battle plans, troop dispositions?”

“No. The only thing I have that was even a slight security risk was my personal codes – and I guess I kind of borrowed Shadow Weaver’s – and those are already flagged. They didn’t give Squadron Leaders access to strategies beyond ‘here’s your objective’. Everything’s very need-to-know in the Horde, and I didn’t.”

Glimmer studied her for a long while before saying, “If it was anyone but you, I’d think you were lying, but…” She nodded, once. “Okay. You don’t have any Deep Dark Horde Secrets that they want to get back. Shadow Weaver’s just being weird, I guess.”

“Uh, guys?” The voice was Entrapta’s. “We have a problem.”

“Let me guess.” Glimmer’s tone was grim, and from the sudden shade that had eclipsed them, Adora had a sinking feeling about why. “The _Fright Zone_ just came back.”

“Yeah. Appeared right in orbit and started descending. It’s about as low as it can get without breaking up. Huh. There might be some things we can learn from its shields-”

“Can you learn those things quickly? Like, a few minutes?”

“Oh, I can take recordings and study those later,” said Entrapta cheerfully. “They’re launching drop shuttles, though. Most of them are going to land between you and here.” The ground shook, just a little. “There they are!”

Adora could only manage, “Crap.” She thought for a moment, then expanded, “If they’re going for hammerblow deployments, they want us bad. They’re building a ring around the _Protector_ , cutting us off – unless…”

“Unless?” said Glimmer, in a tone like she knew the other shoe was about to drop but she wasn’t sure where.

“Unless they have a reason to get out of the way.” Adora gave her most confident smile; it took a bit of effort to fake. “Such as Shadow Weaver’s primary target drawing them off somewhere else.”

“Which would be you,” said Bow grimly.

“Right.” Adora favoured them with a cocky smirk. “I’ll draw them off, run them around in circles for a bit. That should get you an opening to reach the ship.”

“Adora, please.” Glimmer’s eyes were huge, and Adora thought she could see tears beginning to glisten. “Make sure you come back to us. We need to watch each other’s backs, right?”

“Yeah,” said Adora. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure I get back before you leave the system.”

She couldn’t tell whether she’d intended it as a lie or not.

* * *

As Adora bolted, Glimmer and Bow turned to look at each other. Fragments of words crashed into each other as both spoke at once.

After an awkward pause that lasted a few seconds, Glimmer took the lead. “I’m gonna stay behind. Someone needs to look out for her, make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid.”

“Glimmer, no. If you’re with her for this, they’ll send everything after you. She’ll have her best chance if you’re on the ship; Shadow Weaver may want Adora, but you’re still a priority target for the Horde.”

Comprehension dawned in those lilac eyes. “You think they’ll split their forces.”

“Wouldn’t you, if you were trying to catch both Shadow Weaver’s #1 target and the Scourge of the Starways?”

Glimmer gritted her teeth. Bow could tell she was turning this over in her head: whether to rush off and help their friend, or if she was going to listen to reason this time.

“Fffffffffffffffffine,” she said eventually. “But you make sure she’s okay!”

“Of _course_ I will.” Bow pointed. “Now go!”

* * *

Adora switched her transmitter to broadcast in the clear as she scurried up the wall, using the traditional decorations to provide hand- and footholds. “Attention, Horde forces. You guys do know you’re in the wrong area, right? Authorisation: Adora, SP0P-19B5-”

She barely finished the sentence before the sound of Horde fighter engines filled the air. It was deeper than her Carnivore’s song, and these looked like new designs that were flying overhead. The ground shook; from the feel of it, the outer city didn’t have sturdy enough foundations to deal with the hammerblow deployment it was currently enduring.

She moved back down the wall as quickly as she could, before beginning to run.

* * *

Their Predators sitting atop the wreckage of some statues Catra hadn’t liked anyway, the squad began to move out into the streets.

“Lonnie, New Guy, take the east,” ordered Catra, her orders punctuated with finger motions – midway between a point and a stab. “Kyle, Rogelio, take west. Force Captain, you’re with me.”

“Very decisive!” said Scorpia approvingly. “You’re gonna make a great officer someday-”

“Right now,” Catra growled, “all I need to be is a good tracker. Now come on, she’s gotta be around here somewhere.”

Scorpia’s claw tapped against her chin. “You’re not worried that this could be some kind of trap? I dunno, if I was trying to hide, I’d, uh, hide, I guess.”

“Force Captain. Scorpia. It’s _obviously_ a trap.” Catra’s features shifted into a smirk. “But we have an edge, because we _know_ it’s a trap.”

“Gosh, you’re good at this. Why aren’t you _already_ a Force Captain?”

Catra worked hard to control her expression. “Some of our superiors just don’t have an eye for talent, I guess. Now _come on!_ She’s not gonna stay here forever!”

_I’ll drag her back, and Shadow Weaver is finally going to have to appreciate me._

* * *

Adora made her way through the near-deserted streets, ducking into side alleys and behind structures to avoid Horde soldiers. The goal wasn’t to _get_ caught, it was to have Horde troops _try_ and catch her. That was less of a job for immediate shoot-outs and more a job for

“Hey, Adora.”

Of course.

Catra stood in the middle of the street, backed by someone Adora didn’t think she’d seen before: a tall, muscular, white-haired scorpioni wearing a Force Captain’s uniform and rank insignia. A tiny part of Adora could appreciate the view – the woman filled out the tight-fitting sleeves of her uniform like no-one Adora had ever seen – but she had other things to deal with.

Most notable among those other things was _not getting caught_. The locals were keeping their heads down, and while Adora definitely couldn’t blame them under the circumstances, it meant that there weren’t exactly crowds she could disappear into. Nor were there convenient racks of clothes to push over on her like last time. Appealing to Catra’s better nature hadn’t worked, and was especially unlikely to work with this new Force Captain looking over her shoulder.

“Hey, Catra,” she said, keeping her tone light. “I don’t suppose you’ve had second thoughts about the whole Horde thing?”

“Of course not,” said Catra, smirking. “Don’t suppose you’ve had second thoughts about the whole treason thing?”

“Oh, well, now that you ask…”

Adora bolted. Moments later, Catra followed.

* * *

Adora raced down the street, Catra in hot pursuit, that new Force Captain’s protestations fading into the distance. From bitter experience during training, Adora knew Catra had natural advantages in these chases: she was faster, she had a better sense of balance, she had better natural weapons, and she could find Adora by scent. She was also probably more cunning; Adora’s only advantage in laying traps was that she was slightly ahead.

She spun around a hairpin turn and found…

…a public vehicle hangar, the kind of place where civilian-owned vehicles could be stored while in use. One of the skimmers was open, its apparent owner lying unconscious on the ground, suffering from a head wound; he’d been struck a glancing blow by a chunk of falling masonry.

She heard the sound of Catra’s footsteps and dived for the man’s control disc, sitting exposed on the ground. Moving as quickly as she could, she hurled herself into the skimmer’s cockpit and slotted the disc into the control panel.

She could see Catra in the rear-view screen as she took off in the skimmer.

* * *

Adora’s stolen vehicle jolted sideways, and she looked across to see Catra pushing up against her in another skimmer. From the looks of it, she’d broken a hole in the cockpit with something, then hotwired it; her body fur, in a few areas, looked matted with blood.

Metal ground against metal, and the lights in the cockpit started to go red. From the looks of it, their vehicles had managed to intersect somehow, and it turned out that shoving two engines at an angle into the space usually reserved for one engine caused problems for both. The vehicles began to descend, and no matter how Adora tried, she couldn’t reestablish control.

The street rushed up to meet them-

* * *

Glimmer stopped pacing on the bridge of the _Protector_ when the signal came in.

“Bow! Give me some good news.”

“I wish I could,” said Bow glumly. “I lost her. I think I saw two skimmers trying for some sort of aerial joust, so that was probably her, but I didn’t see where they went. I’ll see what I can dig up.”

Glimmer’s primary heart sank.

_Where are you, Adora?_

“Thanks, Bow,” she managed. “I know I can always count on you.”

“If taking off is going to be safer, take off,” Bow told her. “We can hijack transport or find a hiding place if we need it. It might even draw some of their attention.”

* * *

Adora’s eyes snapped open, not that they were doing her much good. Most of her surroundings were darkened, not that she had any idea why, and her side hurt-

The vehicle chase.

_Catra._

She sat bolt upright, and grimaced as she smacked her forehead on solid glass. She could have very easily done without that part.

Her eyes began to adjust, and she realised it wasn’t entirely dark – just mostly dark. She was in the mangled cockpit of her commandeered skimmer, which was jutting out of some water in what looked like an ancient waterway of some sort – the walls were carved stone, and while she couldn’t make out much detail, they looked to be covered in moss. More worryingly, where she’d smacked her head on the glass, there was a red mark; her hand came up, but it was a light cut, presumably from the landing, the flow of blood already stopping. She popped the cockpit and stuck her head out.

There was a groan from nearby, and she turned, gingerly, to see Catra extracting herself from the mangled wreckage of her own skimmer. The girl’s face contorted into a snarl, and she hissed, “Nice going, Adora – you made us crash!”

“ _I_ made us crash? You were the one who tried to park your skimmer inside mine!”

Adora pulled out her pistol and thumbed a control, turning on the small flashlight attached to the barrel, and Catra gave it a sour look.

“That’s right, show off your fancy pistol.”

“You’re really trying to start a fight about that now?”

“Says the traitor who tried to start a fight about us crashing!”

“We don’t have time for this!” Adora looked around and saw, by the side of the slow and turgid water, a walkway of some sort, the railing along its side covered in thick layers of rust and grime. Balancing carefully on the shuttle, she managed to jump to the walkway-

Catra landed in front of her and grinned, her own pistol – a hand-me-down that had probably been in service for twenty years before Shadow Weaver had issued it to her – appearing in her hand. Adora knew, beyond a doubt, that with her adversary’s reflexes, if she tried to bring her own pistol around, Catra would put a shot right through her before she was halfway to making it a standoff.

“Not the scenery I would have chosen for my triumph, but hey, a win is a win – right, Adora?” said Catra mockingly. She lifted her spare hand to her ear. “Scorpia, I have our quarry. Figure out where I am and get a shuttle to me.” A pause. “Scorpia?” Another pause. “Force Captain? Anyone? All Horde frequencies, this is Squadron Leader Catra, report in.” She came within inches of throwing her hands up in frustration, before seemingly remembering that she was holding a pistol. “Okay, looks like we’re going to have to do this the hard way. Hand over your gun; we’re going to find our way back to the surface, just you and me.”

“Just like that training exercise on Geroga,” said Adora.

“Well, not _just_ like it. Still cave orienteering, but…” Catra’s slitted eyes narrowed. “For one thing, at the end of this one, you’re not going to take all the credit.”

“I told Shadow Weaver you were the one who-”

“It doesn’t matter, Adora!” Adora jolted backwards; Catra’s fury had erupted like a volcano. “Hand me your starsdamned pistol and get your ass on the way to the surface!”

* * *

From the thick coat of dust around the place, nobody had come this way in some time. The walkways looked like they had been built for maintenance access in a time when this structure had been maintained; this part of the maze even had a little pier, as if, in times past, the boat for investigating downstream had been moored here.

Of course, it wasn’t there now. That would have been too helpful.

“Tell me something,” said Catra, her anger brought down to just a gentle simmer rather than her past explosion. “Why is Shadow Weaver so eager to catch you? A wanted poster or something, fine, but a shitting _carrier_ to hunt you down?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t lie to me, Adora-”

“I’m not lying!” snapped Adora. “You think I _want_ to have the _Fright Zone_ chasing me all the time? You think I _like_ endangering my ship?”

“Yeah,” said Catra flatly.

“Well…well I don’t!” finished Adora lamely. “It sucks!”

“And yet it gets you want you want.” Catra glared at her. “As long as they’re in danger, you get to be the big hero who saves them. Same way you only kept me around so you could ‘protect’ me, then left me in the ditch when you saw a chance to get that rush from more people.”

“Catra…” Adora said, anger and hurt mingling in her voice. “Is that really what you think of me?”

“Has been for years but thanks for finally noticing, hotshot,” Catra fired back sardonically. “Now come on, there has to be a way out of here. We got in somehow, after all.”

“Through the ceiling,” said Adora sourly.

Catra’s voice was like a cheesegrater as she shot back, “Then you’d better get good at climbing.”

* * *

Bow kept his head down when he felt the pressure against his back. He was sitting on a flat, backless bench in some half-hidden alleyway, bent over, breathing heavily. He’d been running up and down town for at least an hour, trying to reach Adora on the comms while evading patrols. Not helping was that someone seemed to have deployed comm jamming; presumably some local resistance fighter trying to disrupt the Horde operations.

The pressure, in this case, felt like a segmented tail, pressed up against his back– not in a hostile fashion, admittedly, but it was still definitely in his personal space. From the bench groaning and shifting, someone else had definitely joined him on it.

“Sorry,” said the tail’s owner, her voice deep, warm and friendly. She sounded just as tired as Bow did. “Been a bit of a tiring day.”

“I know the feeling,” Bow said ruefully. “I’d love to be able to get out of the area, but I got separated from a friend of mine and I need to find her.”

“Wow, same here. What are the odds, huh?”

“On a day like today? Probably really high.”

“Yeah, that’s fair,” said the stranger.

Bow stood up. “I gotta get going. What does your friend look like?”

“Uh…she’s pretty short, long hair that she really should comb more, long furry tail. You’ll probably recognise her by her eyes; her left one’s gold, right one’s blue, and it’s like they’re kinda…lit by an inner star? She’s pretty, too.”

In a window across the road, Bow saw his reflection. He couldn’t see much of the person behind him, but what he could see included broad shoulders…and part of a Horde Force Captain’s uniform.

“Right. I’ll keep an eye out for her,” said Bow, his mind racing. “I’ll send her here if I see her.”

“Gosh, thanks a lot,” said the stranger. “You know, you almost never find someone willing to just be friendly these days; everyone just seems to be so hostile, all the time, on these occupied planets.” Somehow, to Bow’s bewilderment, she said it without irony, like she’d never even considered the possibility that the occupation might be the thing that was getting people’s dander up. “Speaking of which, what’s your friend look like? I’ll send her here too!”

“Uh…dirty blonde hair, pale skin, reasonably tall. Okay, need to go. Good luck!”

Before she could turn around and probably blow his admittedly threadbare cover, Bow bolted. He was pretty sure he’d recognised that description (minus the poetry) from some of the things Adora had said about her former best friend, who she’d run into on Cenzos. Catra, that was it.

This could be a problem.

* * *

Adora’s first warning that the floor was going to give way was the floor giving way.

Specifically, the floor under her right foot collapsed without warning, toppling her sideways against the railing – which also gave way under her impact. (In those few moments of frozen focus you get in a state of intense shock, she realised that the railing was so rusty that it probably couldn’t have handled a somewhat chubby domesticated skitlet, to say nothing of a six-foot rebel with a fairly comprehensive workout routine.)

The water wasn’t exactly cold when she hit it, but she could tell it was going to be freezing as soon as it was exposed to even a slightly cooler than normal wind. She had enough presence of mind to take a breath before she hit, but the clothes she was wearing soaked up the water like a sponge, and Adora hadn’t exactly had much opportunity to do swimming practice lately, what with the ship not exactly having a swimming pool. Also, the water was filthy, which absolutely was not helping.

As she was trying to dredge up – oops, poor choice of words – her swimming knowledge, a sudden force yanked her upwards by the collar, and she breached the surface, spluttering and gasping for air.

“Nice try,” said Catra, “but you don’t get to drown yourself until Shadow Weaver gives you permission.”

“Catra!” Adora gulped down the air. “But you hate the water! You saved me-”

“It’s not about _you_ , Adora. The commodore just wants you alive, that’s all – wait.” The light beam from the pistol that had been Adora’s that morning played over the walls, revealing wrought metal bars, hammered into the stone – obviously a ladder of some sort.

The Horde soldier gestured with the gun barrel. “You first.”

* * *

Both Adora and Catra winced in unison as the door swung open to reveal the surface, their eyes not yet adjusted to the light. They seemed to be on the outskirts of town, and the streets were deserted. This had apparently been some long-forgotten maintenance access, the key probably lost decades ago – Catra had taken the straightforward approach and shot the lock off.

Catra gestured with the pistol. “Network still seems to be down, so we’re gonna head for the fighters; their comms should be able to punch through the jamming, or whatever’s going on here.”

The ground shook as yet another shuttle landed; at this point, it was probably just for effect-

The street gave way beneath their feet. Adora, who was feeling a distinct sense of déjà vu, flung herself to the left as it began to go, turning the leap into a combat roll, but still not getting far enough to one side before the stones that were supposed to be supporting her began to descend. Catra, who had leaped right instead, was in a similar boat – both of them were left dangling above a long, painful-looking descent into an underground waterway that was no longer slow and functional. If either of them fell in, they probably wouldn’t be getting back out again. Adora tried to pull herself up, but her waterlogged clothes added just too much weight-

“Adora!”

How Bow had gotten here just in time, she didn’t know, but his voice was a welcome sound. Within moments, her friend was there. She suppressed the urge to flinch as he grabbed her arm and pulled; with the extra power and leverage, Adora pulled herself onto the part of the street that hadn’t fallen in. She could tell he was wrinkling his nose, but he hadn’t even hesitated to help her despite her coating of ill-smelling slime.

Catra tried to pull herself up and fire the gun at them simultaneously, but her shots went wide as the chunk of stone she was clinging to gave way-

A large, burgundy-coloured pincer closed on Catra’s wrist before she could fall into the darkness below.

“I got you, Catra!” said the new Force Captain, and Adora and Bow bolted. The gap in the street should delay Catra and her friend, at least; it looked like it had gone quite a long way up the street. Ahead of her, she could see some Horde fighters – the larger design, which she’d seen flying overhead a few hours ago – sitting on top of some rubble. “Maybe we can hotwire one of those! Come on!”

“Didn’t you tell me it was really hard to do that?”

“Yeah, but this is a new design!” she said. “Maybe there’s some security holes they haven’t closed yet.”

* * *

The shields began to edge closer to the red as the swarm of Horde fighters pressed their attack.

“We gonna leave the system?” snapped Mermista.

Glimmer glared at her. “We wait for Adora and Bow!”

“Bow wouldn’t want us to get blown up, right?” shot back Mermista. “I’m calling in that favour you owe me; we’re getting outta here while we still have a ship to do it in. We can always come back later-”

“I’m getting a transmission from one of the Horde fighters!” said Entrapta. “It’s using Adora’s code. Opening channel.”

“Attention, _Protector_ ,” said the speaker. It was definitely Adora’s voice. “Permission to come aboard?”

A smile appeared on Glimmer’s face. The shaking seemed to lessen; on the tactical display hologram, the red dots of the swarming fighters broke off as a new, larger red dot appeared in the middle.

“Permission granted, unknown fighter. But please hurry. We can’t afford to drop shields for long.” She paused for a moment. “Do you have Bow with you?”

“I’m aboard, yeah,” said another, very familiar voice. “Just trying to get this turret to work properly; it has a lot of targeting compensation, and it’s throwing me off – ah, there’s the setting.”

The larger red dot burst out of the cloud of Carnivores, which scattered in its wake, diving away from the sweep of Bow’s guns. Entrapta displayed an image of it for the bridge crew: bulkier than the wreckage still sitting under a tarp in the docking bay, with its guns built into the fuselage instead of stuck out on pods.

“New design?” said Glimmer. “Don’t remember seeing any of those around while I was, you know, scourging the starways.”

“It figures,” said Adora lightly. “They talk about how great these things were gonna be for like two years, then they wait until I leave to finish them.”

Moving quickly, Adora landed the fighter in the _Protector_ ’s hold, then raced up to the cockpit. Glimmer stood to allow her into the pilot’s seat, and the _Protector_ begun to move like only Adora could manage.

“We’re doing better, but we’re still in trouble,” reported Entrapta. “I’m picking up some really wild distortions in jumpspace; if we try to escape, we’ll probably explode. I’m also picking up…” Her voice shifted. “I have no idea what I’m picking up, but it looks really neat. It’s dead ahead, zooming in.”

A hologram opened like a flower, displaying whatever it was Emily and Entrapta had found. It appeared to be some kind of portal, but it didn’t have the enormous stabilising structures that the other portal networks depended on – even the Free Territories, which built its gateways much smaller than the Horde, still required a lot of material, and the Horde’s were designed to accommodate an entire fleet.

Adora looked, for a moment, like she was listening to something, like a voice no-one else could hear. “We go through.”

Even Mermista’s face fell, and Glimmer felt the need to intervene. “Uh, Adora? Doesn’t that strike you as a little…insane?”

“Trust me.”

Mermista’s eyes bored into Glimmer, but she forced down her butterflies. “All right, Adora. If you think this is safe, do it. But do it quickly before I change my mind!”

The ship’s structure actually began to groan as Adora pushed the engines. These transports had never been designed for this kind of flight stress; they were supposed to slowly move prisoners, not take part in mad, daring escapes.

As the _Protector_ headed for the portal, the entire bridge fell silent. Glimmer thought she heard Perfuma muttering something under her breath; a prayer, perhaps?

They plunged in, and the universe went white.

* * *

“My instructions were very clear,” said Shadow Weaver darkly. “Your orders were to locate and detain Adora. By the account from your own debriefing, she was with you for a lengthy period on the planet. And now she has escaped. Again.” Shadow Weaver’s eyes bored into Catra. “One might begin to suspect that you were intentionally failing – out of some misplaced, lingering affection, perhaps.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Catra snapped. Her wrist was in a med-cuff; Scorpia’s grab had saved her life, but it was going to be a little while before the bruises healed. “I’d have had her if Kyle hadn’t left his access codes there-”

“It is a poor worker blames their tools, Catra, and Kyle is one of yours.” The witch’s tone had knives in it. “You are running out of chances, child. Get me results…not just excuses.”

 _Aren’t I just one of yours, then?_ thought Catra, and clamped down on that thought before it could escape. She didn’t want to pick a fight right now – not without backup, anyway. She went for a less hostile approach. “And what about that anomalous portal? Where the hell did that come from?”

“We will know once the signal from our tracker reaches us.”

_Funny how it’s ‘our’ tracker now…_

“You are dismissed, Catra,” finished Shadow Weaver. “Do not fail me again, and do not return here until at least tomorrow; I must requisition a new fighter for your squadron, to replace the one your incompetence has cost us!”

* * *

Adora blinked stupidly as they emerged from the portal. She hadn’t expected it to be that bright. “Entrapta? Do we know where we are?”

“Running a quick check…Star patterns indicate we’re in Apocyn. Also, that weird portal disappeared after we went through it. I think maybe it was causing the turmoil in jumpspace? It’s settled down a lot now.”

“That did seem weird,” said Glimmer. “Jumpspace is usually pretty calm, isn’t it?”

“Yeah! You don’t get readings like that – well, ever. Those sensors are usually supposed to just find minor quirks that need to be factored in, not whatever _that_ was.” Entrapta was clearly turning something over in her mind. “You know, the First Ones had some of the best portal technology, and the ruins on Apocyn are pretty famous. I can’t say for sure that they’re linked, not without more data, but that’s my working hypothesis. Gonna have to hit the books for this one, it’s gonna be so much fun!”

“Not my idea of fun,” said Glimmer, “but you do you, Entrapta.” She gestured to Adora and Bow. “You two, come with me, I gotta…let’s go with ‘debrief’ you.” She made a face. “Not like that.”

Bow opened his mouth, then, at Glimmer’s warning look, shut it again.

* * *

“Hi Catra!”

Catra forced her face into a slightly less murderous configuration. “Hey, Scorpia. What’s up?”

“Are you okay? You look pretty down.”

“It’s nothing,” said Catra. “Just…Shadow Weaver’s really riding my ass on this one and I still have no idea why. What’s the big deal about one Squadron Leader?”

The big scorpioni eyed her for a moment, and said, “That’s not all, is it?”

“No,” said Catra, before she could bring up her shields. Oh well, she was committed now. Her mind quickly raced ahead. “I just…I wish Shadow Weaver would give me the right resources, you know? I’m putting in a lot of work on this, and she keeps undermining me.” Yeah. That was good. Had enough truth in it to be meaningful, but didn’t get mired in all the annoying emotional stuff she hated.

“Oh, I know how hard it can be when an officer gets to be a bit of a roadblock.” Scorpia stuck out her chest proudly. “Well, I’ve got your back, rookie – to the end! I dunno how much help I can provide to get this mission finished, but I’ll do what I can.”

 _I don’t believe you_ , thought Catra, but knew better than to say it out loud. She’d gotten some of what she wanted, at least; the Force Captain was on her side.

* * *

“You took us through that portal because your _imaginary friend_ told you to?” said Glimmer, her voice rising. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Now I know how my mom felt when I told her I was going to go and start an insurrection.”

“Light Hope isn’t imaginary!” Adora looked down. “At least, I don’t think she is. If she was imaginary, then why did that portal take us exactly where we needed to go?”

“That’s actually a pretty good point,” said Bow. The look Glimmer shot him could have stripped all the hull plating from a battleship, but he bore it pretty well. “All I’m saying is that there’s some weird stuff going on.” A thought occurred. “Wait, were you talking to her in your sleep night we arrived here?”

“Yeah!” Adora’s relief was palpable. “She told me that while we were here, I should head to the First One ruins. With Perfuma.”

Glimmer emitted a low groaning sound. “This is crazy. This is _beyond_ crazy. The light from Merely Insane is going to take a thousand years to reach us, that’s how far beyond crazy we are.”

“Okay, yeah, it’s a bit absurd,” said Bow. “But so far that absurdity is managing a 100% success rate. It got us here, didn’t it?”

“I hate it when the things in my life that don’t make sense make sense.” Glimmer rubbed her eyes. “Okay. Fine. Take Perfuma to the First One ruins when we land. But.” She held up a warming finger. “The moment this looks like it could be a trap, get out of there. And unless you get some really compelling evidence while you’re there, I’m banning any more expeditions through mysterious portals on the say-so of the voices in your head, and when we get back to Brightmoon, we’re going to get someone to take a look at you.” Her voice softened. “I’m not trying to hurt you, but…you gotta see how this looks from the outside, right?”

“Yeah, I understand,” said Adora slowly. “Truth be told, I was beginning to doubt my sanity myself. I just…didn’t see any other options, you know? We couldn’t stay there, and Entrapta said we couldn’t jump out, so…”

“Yeah. Your imaginary friend may have saved all our asses. Doesn’t mean I have to like it, though.” She seemed to relax. “And, for what it’s worth…snark aside, I’m glad you did come back. I was worried you were going to try and haul them off to some other system or something.”

“I had to. This is my home.” And Adora knew, deep down, that it wasn’t a lie.

* * *

_Why do you delay, Adora? You have reached Apocyn. You must do as I require-_

“It’s been a long day, Light Hope. I need to be fresh when I go in. The First Ones didn’t sleep?”

_That is not in my data files._

“Well, humans definitely do.” Adora thought for a moment. “Are you able to open more portals for us later? It could really help us.”

_That portal was not under my control. First One technology is slowly coming online, and that includes portal technology – but it is hard to control. I am able to track the portals, guide you to the right ones – but I cannot create or direct them._

“So more of them are going to happen?”

_Most likely._

“And why have they never been reported before now?”

_A Runestone has already brought online in your absence. I have only a little data on how, but it will make your task easier in the long run._

“And what is that task, exactly?”

_Error. I am unable to access all data on your mission. I have calculated that more information will become available once your task is complete in the Apocyn system and I can access those storage banks._

“What do you have?”

_You must restore balance to the universe. Everything depends on it._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I _can_ write a chapter in less than a month!
> 
> I encourage everyone who enjoys this to check out frequent commenter [athetos144](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Athetos144/pseuds/Athetos144)'s stuff.


	7. The Heart-Blossom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adora, Perfuma and Entrapta travel to the First One ruins on Apocyn.

Perfuma emerged from her morning meditations a few moments before the knock on her door. Rising from the mat, she opened the door to find Adora standing there, looking awkward.

“Adora,” she said, and gave a deep nod. “Please, come in.”

Adora’s awkward look intensified a few notches. “Um, if you want?” she said, stepping through the door into Perfuma’s cabin. “I could have done it fine just out there? There’s no need to-”

“Sit down. Please.” Perfuma smiled gently. “It could be a long day, from what Glimmer tells me. You don’t need to stand to attention all the time.”

Perfuma’s cabin had several chairs in it, built with a certain amount of slope; Adora selected one, apparently at random, and sat down. Her spine was ramrod straight; it looked quite uncomfortable. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay with the mission. I’d understand if you thought it was a little…weird.”

“I’ve never spent this long in space,” replied Perfuma. “I’ve never spent so long with such different people. Every new experience is ‘weird’, and all of them are worth exploring. Even this one.”

“You don’t think I’m crazy?”

“I try not to think of people in those terms, Adora.” Perfuma nodded to the mat. “I’ve spent many hours seeking communion with the universe; who can say that your visions are not sent by the universe itself?” A momentary flicker of anger crossed her face. “It would be frustrating, to have spent so long seeking, only for someone else to find…but there may be a lesson for me to learn in that too.”

There was a very long pause before Adora said, “Okay. Good.” She paused and turned to look around the room. “Uh, Perfuma? What’s that in the corner?”

“I suppose you would never have learned about her in the Horde.” Perfuma headed over to the corner. It had a small, carefully carved and painted sculpture, showing a dark-skinned woman with golden-white hair; she was clad in white, with some details picked out in gold, and the hilt of a sword was visible over her shoulder. “This is the She-Ra. The story goes that a long time ago, hundreds or thousands of years, she saved the galaxy from a great evil. To this day, she’s revered as a hero, sometimes a prophet or an angel. I grew up hearing stories of her feats.”

“Do you believe them?”

Perfuma thought for a moment. “I do not know if they are all true, but I believe there is at least a grain of truth to them. Look at the statue: we are a long way from my home on Plumeria Prime, but I found it during our visit to Velavel; her legend was able to travel that far.”

“She sounds really important to you,” said Adora softly.

“She is. I learned a lot – about right and wrong, and about myself – from the stories I was told.” Perfuma knew her voice had taken on a wistful tone, but she didn’t mind. “When I was a child, there were times I would hope – pray, even – that the She-Ra would return and stop the Horde’s advance. There are times I still hope she is out there, somewhere.”

“…It’s a nice thought,” managed Adora. “I should really go and get ready for the mission. I’ll see you when we land?”

“I will join you then.”

* * *

Catra, her uniform slightly in disarray – she’d had to put it on very quickly – came to a halt at Shadow Weaver’s open door. “Uh, you wanted to see me, Shadow Weaver?”

“Our tracker has located the _Constrictor_. It appears to have emerged from the anomalous portal in the Apocyn system.”

Catra flicked through a few star maps in her head until she found the one she was looking for. “ _Apocyn_? Even with the jumpspace turbulence down, it could take us weeks to get there.” She bit back a curse. “Even the laws of physics like her better than me.”

“I have already sent orders to the nearest Horde forces to locate and detain our runaways,” said Shadow Weaver. “All we will need to do is sweep in and recapture her…and you will be unable to interfere in the process.”

“Fine,” said Catra, in a not-fine kind of voice. “I hope you’ve warned the local garrison to be careful. I don’t know how they do it, but they seem to cause chaos wherever they go, and the garrison on Cenzos didn’t seem up to the challenge.”

Shadow Weaver’s voice had an audible sneer to it as she replied, “Neither have you, Catra.”

“Do you require anything further, Commodore?” said Catra in a poisonously sweet voice.

“Not at present, Squadron Leader. You are dismissed.”

Catra managed to keep her temper under control all the way back to her dorm, although the scratches in the wall metal there ended up a little bit deeper.

* * *

Adora stood on the ramp, the strap of a carbine looped over her shoulders. With her pistol still in Catra’s possession, she had to make do with what she could get.

She turned to Glimmer and said, “You sure you’ll be OK?”

“Assuming Double Trouble’s contacts are legit, we should be.” Glimmer patted her own carbine. “And if they’re not, I have this, and Bow’s going to be tagging along. We should be able to at least get back to the shuttle if we get double-crossed, and then we can run and hide.”

“Okay,” said Adora reluctantly. “Good luck, then. I should get going, the ruins aren’t too far into the woods-”

“I wanna come too!” said a nasal voice from behind them.

There was a skittering sound, and one of the ship’s drones popped into view, its single purple eye glinting in a way Adora could only parse as glee.

“You guys are going to a First One ruin and _you gotta let me come along_.” The drone skidded to a halt, whereupon it began vibrating. “I’ve always wanted to see the Apocyn ruins! They’re some of the most intact ones I’ve ever heard of!”

Adora shrugged. “I was told I had to bring Perfuma, but I wasn’t told I couldn’t bring anyone else. And any backup has to be useful, right?”

“Right!”

Glimmer coughed. “I should go help Bow prep the shuttle. Good luck. And Adora…I hope you do find something there apart from the usual rubble and robots.”

“Yeah,” said Adora quietly. “So do I.”

* * *

Glimmer had never been much for architecture, but she knew enough to tell that Jasmine City drew from an older Plumerian style; presumably it had been in fashion when the settlement on Apocyn was built, and they’d stuck with it indefinitely. Most of the structures were built low to the ground, relying heavily on wood and bricks; many had trellises covered in climbing vines. Larger structures, such as the odd manor house – presumably built for the early colony’s nobles – were designed with actual trees growing through them. The integration of living plants was most obvious when you came to a major square; these were generally the home of fountains, full of blossoming water plants. It was beautiful. The shuttle was a closed environment, but Glimmer just knew that outside, the scent of flowers would be everywhere.

Everywhere, that was, except the Horde quarter. Looming over the low buildings was a chunky grey fortification, standing out like a knife hilt driven into a tree. The meeting place with Double Trouble’s contact was fairly close to it, and so they drew nearer, trying to keep as low a profile as possible.

Bow gestured out the window. “Look at the plants. The closer we get to the Horde stronghold…”

It took Glimmer a moment to realise what he was talking about. The trees and trellises were just as common here, near the hilt, but they weren’t growing as well – the leaves were generally closer to yellow than green, and the vines didn’t look too sturdy.

“Pollutants,” she said softly. “The Horde probably use some pretty nasty chemicals.”

“Can’t be doing the locals much good either.” For once, Double Trouble actually sounded sincere. They shook their head, as if banishing the thought; the ponytail they were now wearing echoed the motions. “Anyway, we’re nearly here. They probably keep their bribes all up-to-date with the local enforcers, and that means their hideout is safe from both the Horde and the people who don’t want to start a fight within spitting distance of the Horde.”

“You’re sure?” said Glimmer. “It feels a bit weird to be meeting your Sinister Underworld Contacts in a city where every other building is half covered in flowers. It’s like getting mugged in the doll aisle of a toyshop.”

“It’s not that weird, darling.” Double Trouble flashed her a grin. “You’re just not used to seeing it. There’s an underworld everywhere, if you know where to look.”

“Not in Brightmoon,” said Glimmer stubbornly.

Double Trouble made a snickering sound. “If you say so, your highness.”

* * *

The First One ruin resembled a spire of crystalline glass, wrapped in countless generations of growth – mostly, Adora couldn’t help but observe, thorn bushes.

Most prominently, the door was covered in a sprawling thorn bush. Adora shrugged and drew a knife-

“Wait.” Perfuma examined the plant for a few moments, and then slowly, carefully, shifted the branches out of the way, the thorns scraping ineffectually against the bark-like scales on the back of her hand. She looked, almost apologetically, at Adora. “Sometimes a little patience is all you need.”

Entrapta’s drone, which had been sitting on Adora’s shoulder like a weird pet, jumped down onto the translucent floor and scanned the door, which was engraved with strange hieroglyphs. After a few moments, Entrapta said, “I’m not an expert on their language, but I think this says ‘Etheria’.”

“Etheria?” said Adora.

“Your guess is as good as mine!” Entrapta thought for a second. “Bow said that First One crystal you found on Tobis responded to your touch?”

Adora reached out and placed a hand on the door. There was a distant hum, and then the hieroglyphs lit up.

It seemed no more interesting in opening, though.

“Etheria?” tried Adora, and with a grinding noise, the door slid open.

“No-one’s managed to get access to this place in hundreds of years,” said Entrapta, her voice somehow hushed and excited at the same time. “I’ve read dozens of guesses about what it was for, what was in it…I liked the one about it holding an army of robots that would wipe all civilisation off Apocyn.”

“You _liked_ that one?” said Adora, shocked.

The drone somehow managed to convey a shrug, even though it couldn’t, technically speaking, shrug. “I like robots.” The small flashlights mounted on its “face” lit up, casting a giant cone of blinding light across the ruin; usually, they were only used for close-up maintenance in the dark, so apparently Entrapta had been making some upgrades. “Not seeing many around here, though.”

Adora scanned the room, alert to any potential hostiles – robotic or otherwise. They were conspicuous by their absence. What she _could_ see was a large, glass-crystal room, hints of filigree circuitry glinting in the light from the drone, long-disused control panels set into consoles around the walls.

At the centre of the room, impossible to miss, was a giant green pillar. Unlike the austere utilitarianism of the rest of the structure, the pillar was decorated – its base was a spreading shape of unpredictable patterns, broader than the design of the pillar would suggest, while higher sections were carved with squiggly lines or long, slender shapes –

“It’s a tree,” said Perfuma. “They carved it to look like a tree.”

Adora tilted her head, and yeah, now she could see it: the base was designed to look like roots, the squiggles were the bark, and the shapes at the top were tessellating leaves.

“This is AMAZING!” said Entrapta. Although her drone couldn’t levitate, it was certainly putting in its best effort. “Everyone guessed from their crystals and designs that the First Ones had at least some sense of beauty, but we’ve never found actual _art_ of theirs before!” The drone’s eye flickered, and Adora realised it was taking detailed images – presumably for Entrapta to pore over later.

“How do you know it’s art?” said Adora. “Maybe there’s a technical reason for it to look like that.”

The drone paused, and said, “Ooh, good point. Gonna have to do more research. Adora, could you try touching it, please?”

Adora laid a hand on it, and while it began to glow faintly, nothing else happened.

“Etheria?” said Adora.

Nothing else continued to happen.

“Hmm.” Entrapta was clearly deep in thought. “Maybe it needs two people to activate? Perfuma, you give it a poke.”

Perfuma shrugged. She reached out, touched the crystalline “tree”, and disappeared.

* * *

Their “client” for the book smuggling was based in what, from the sign out the front, was in theory a toy company: a sprawling, fenced-in compound, with more metallics than the majority of the city, but still with creepers and vines encouraged to grow over parts of the building.

All Glimmer could say was, “I swear, the toyshop thing was a _joke_.”

Grinning from ear to ear, Double Trouble steered their shuttle into the hangar, which apparently doubled as a loading dock; they were directed to park next to a mass transit skimmer – a long, boxy design that was ninety percent cargo bay.

The building’s “security” were a roughly equal mixture of Plumerians and other species, but all of them, male, female, and otherwise, were wearing immaculately tailored clothes; Glimmer could make out hints of what looked like strangely patterned scars in a few places – an exposed wrist, a hint at the base of the neck. Several bore a painful-looking burn scar on the back of their left hand.

“Oh, it’s these guys,” said Double Trouble, as “security” escorted them to an office. “I’ve never worked for them directly, but we move in similar circles. Never was a fan, though; too many rules.” They grinned again. “And as we all know, darlings, rules and I don’t get along.”

The office, while large, was sparse to the point of austerity – only a few notable touches made it clear that the room was in use. An ornate rack with a large piece of cloth thrown over it held what might well have been a branding iron, presumably the source of the burns; one corner held what looked like a small personal gym, with a grappling dummy and heavy bag sitting out in the open. Pride of place went to a large desk, the back of a chair visible behind it; it had the computers and paperwork one would expect of such an important desk. No desk toys or mugs, though. One of their escorts, a humanoid wearing a reasonably fancy outfit that had apparently been chosen to accentuate his huge, powerful-looking legs, moved to stand at the flank of the chair.

The chair turned around, revealing the boss – a member of a species Glimmer didn’t immediately recognise. He was very close to human, save for the green skin; his shirt, which looked extremely expensive (in fact, all of his clothes, including his wrist communicator, looked extremely expensive), was open, revealing the whipcord muscles of a trained fighter and a pattern of blue-black scars – two columns of them, in fact, one on each side of his torso. Now that she had a better view, Glimmer realised they were tracing out a floral pattern. It looked like a painful way to do what a tattoo could just as easily achieve, but then, it wasn’t Glimmer’s skin.

He was also wearing dark glasses indoors, and his expression was completely immobile. He inclined his head at them. “Ah. Our contractors – and ahead of schedule, too. You have done well. I trust the agreed-upon supplies are in your shuttle?”

Glimmer and Bow both turned to look at Double Trouble, who slithered forwards. “The books we were given are there, darling. If there is a shortfall, it may be wise to take it up with our supplier.”

“Show Karatti some respect-” barked the Plumerian, but the boss held up a hand, and the Plumerian’s mouth snapped shut.

“The books are being counted as we speak,” said Karatti, “and you will be paid for the delivery once they are tallied.” The large, fancy communicator on his wrist buzzed. “Ah, and it appears there are enough. Hoove, provide them with the money they were promised.”

The enforcer, glowering, opened a drawer in Karatti’s desk and extracted a payment stick – a small rod of circuits that could hold currency. They were more common in Horde systems; Brightmoon hadn’t really transitioned to them yet. Hoove inserted it into a handheld processor slate and began tapping the controls.

“Oh yes, and one other thing…” Karatti gestured to the enforcer. “Add a fair payment for their shuttle as well, and provide them with a skimmer. The vehicle may be useful to us, and it would be safer for our guests to leave in another transport than the one that has already been recorded. Have Kalamarr escort it to a safehouse later.”

Glimmer tensed up at that, but after a moment, she forced her hackles down. It was being taken, yes, but they were getting paid for it, and while she hated to admit it, Karatti was right: they’d be safer in a civilian skimmer than a shuttle that was probably already flagged.

The enforcer brandished the slate at them; from the looks of it, it was indeed the money Double Trouble had agreed to, plus the market value of a third-hand Horde shuttle, minus the market value of a second-hand civilian skimmer. At Glimmer’s nod, the payment stick was removed and pressed into her hand.

Karatti nodded curtly to her. “I believe this concludes our business. Hoove will escort you to your skimmer.”

* * *

After a few moments, Adora’s brain came back online.

“Perfuma!”

“She has not been harmed,” said a voice from around them.

“Light Hope!” shouted Adora. “Where is she?”

“She is where she needs to be right now. As are you.”

Blue light flared, shaping itself into a humanoid figure: a tall, blue-skinned woman with a narrow waist. A large, knotty patch of darkness was visible on her chest, full of shifting symbols that Adora couldn’t quite recognise – although they were definitely similar to the writing on the door.

A side part of Adora’s brain noticed that Entrapta’s drone was beginning to vibrate with glee.

“You’re a machine,” said Adora softly.

“That is broadly correct. I am an adjunct program to the Heart of Etheria function core, possibly the only such program still operational.”

Entrapta could hold her enthusiasm no longer, and the drone bounced into view, doing its very best impression of an excitable skitlet hatchling when the family gets home. (Adora had never actually seen a skitlet hatchling in real life, but at one point Glimmer had insisted on showing her some cute animal videos. It had been a revelation.)

“Ooooooo I have so many questions! What’s it like being a computer? What’s the Heart of Etheria? What were the First Ones like? Where did they go?”

Light Hope studied the drone with a blank expression. “You were not instructed to bring this machine with you.”

“I couldn’t have got in without her,” Adora said defensively. “I could only get the door open because she knows enough First One writing to translate the sign!”

“You do not possess the capacity to read Venhlan?” Light Hope’s expression didn’t change. “Linguistic data files are easily accessible.”

“Maybe to you, but I don’t think we can access First One files either.”

Those impassive holographic eyes studied her for a few moments. “I was not aware of these limitations. I will compensate where possible for them.”

Adora shook her head furiously, as if to banish the distractions. “We’re getting off topic! Where’s Perfuma?”

“She is with the Heart-Blossom,” said the hologram simply. “This facility was constructed to host a stable portal to it. If she attunes to it successfully, the balance of the universe will be shifted in our favour.”

“And if she doesn’t attune successfully?”

“That data is not available to me.”

“That figures,” said Adora sourly. “So you could have just sent Perfuma to her death?”

“It is possible,” admitted Light Hope, “but it is unlikely. The data I do possess indicates that past attunements had at most a single-digit chance of leading to death.”

“Can you send me there too?” burbled the drone.

“Request denied,” said Light Hope.

* * *

“So who were those guys?” asked Glimmer, as their skimmer headed out from the compound.

Double Trouble took a breath. “They call themselves the Far Hand. They’re a crime syndicate, just like any other; they just tell themselves they’re honourable as long as they don’t carry guns or run drugs.”

Bow cut in with, “You don’t buy it?”

“There are worse groups to have in your city,” admitted the shapeshifter, “but really, darling, I’m not sure how honourable smuggling and racketeering become just because they’ll punish you with a branding iron if you screw up. Honestly, I find the whole thing to be a self-deceiving pantomime.” Another grin. “Whereas I, at least, am honest enough not to pretend to morality. I’m a bastard, darling, and so are they; but at least I admit it.”

“Hang on.” Glimmer gestured out of the window. “That Horde broadcast tower over there – I don’t see any of the usual security systems. We should be able to mess it up pretty quickly – screw with Horde comms a bit.”

The top of Double Trouble’s head was in danger of falling off. “This is why I like you, your highness. You complete a job, you get the payment in hand, and your first thought is, ‘let’s go and raise some hell’. Really, people like Karatti should be learning from _you_ ; this way of handling things is _much_ more fun.”

Bow gave her a Look that said, so much more effectively than words, “you’ve reached the point where Double Trouble respects you as a hell-raiser, this is probably a bad thing,” but he pointed the skimmer’s nose down anyway.

* * *

Perfuma blinked away the afterimage of the blinding flash. She’d touched the crystal “tree”, and then…

Her vision clearing, she drank in the area. It was…beautiful. Almost like home, even. She’d been deposited in what looked like a forest glade, surrounded by flowers, a vast tree at its heart – the strange pink crystal it had apparently grown around was unusual, but it definitely wasn’t causing it any harm.

“It’s called the Heart-Blossom.”

Perfuma spun around to see a familiar-looking Plumerian. The newcomer had woody brown skin mottled with freckle-like green dots, head-vines adorned with golden-white flowers, and amber-tinted eyes with glowing indigo-blue pupils. She was clad in white, with some details picked out in gold, and the hilt of a sword was visible over her shoulder.

After a moment, Perfuma realised why the newcomer looked so familiar.

Apart from the colour of her eyes and flowers, the newcomer was her. And she was wearing the kind of clothes that Perfuma would always associate with the legendary She-Ra.

* * *

“So. The Heart-Blossom.” Adora was pacing around the room under Light Hope’s gaze, while Entrapta’s drone bounced from console to console. “What is it?” A thought occurred. “You told me last night that a runestone had come online. Is the Heart-Blossom another runestone?”

“That is correct,” said Light Hope with a curt nod. “There are multiple runestones that must be activated to restore the balance. Activation requires attunement with a genetically compatible adjunct.”

“Genetically compatible…That’s why you needed Perfuma, right? If you just needed a Plumerian, you have at least a million to choose from just on this continent.”

“That is also correct.” Light Hope’s voice was that of a pet owner watching a skitlet pull off a particularly clever trick. “By some coincidence, your ship contains multiple high-compatibility adjuncts.”

“So how many runestones are there?”

“Lesser runestones that do not require attunement to function can be found in most First One structures.”

A scuttling noise told Adora that Entrapta had decided to join in the conversation. “I’ve seen a couple! They’re amazing pieces of engineering. They can convert ambient magic directly into power! Nothing in the Free Territories or the Horde can do that. If we could figure out a way to integrate a runestone into the _Protector_ ’s core, we might never need to take on fuel again!”

“They are adequate,” said Light Hope, sounding perhaps a tiny bit flattered. “The primary runestones, however, are more powerful and specialised. They are able to shape magic, as well as drawing power from it. By bringing them online, damage to the interstellar arcana grid can be repaired.”

With a gesture, Light Hope created a hologram of a starfield. Overlaid on the stellar map were lines of silver fire. Before Adora’s eyes, the lines shifted, sometimes changing course wildly, sometimes breaking and trailing off.

“With no runestones online,” continued the hologram, “the grid was in disarray. The Fractal Flake has recently come online, however.” What had once been a major junction lit up; now, it was marked with a hexagonal shape, like an ice crystal. The silver lines around it began to restabilise, although it was still a chaotic mess. “Bringing more runestones online will better rebuild the arcana grid, and thus permit me access to key files.”

“I’m gonna need some more. Where they are, and so on.”

Light Hope emitted a low chime. “There are five primary runestones: the Fractal Flake, the Heart-Blossom, the Black Garnet, the Pearl and the Moonstone.” She buzzed. “The Fractal Flake is fully online, and I am picking up some unusual telemetry from the Black Garnet.”

“Unusual how?” said Adora suspiciously.

“That is unclear. I will analyse it further.”

Adora took a deep breath. “Okay. Let me make sure I’m getting everything. You want me to run around the galaxy bringing these things online, which will ‘bring balance to the universe’. What does that even mean?”

“The arcana grid served as a stabilisation system under the First Ones, limiting the risk of dangerous celestial phenomena.” Light Hope’s hologram flickered. “I do not have sufficient access to data files to provide a complete list of functions.”

“So…it regulated solar flares, limited cosmic storms, that kind of thing?”

“That is correct,” said Light Hope. “There will likely be a temporary increase in strange phenomena and unusual portal activity as it returns to functionality, but that is a temporary state; once the arcana grid is restored, these will decline once again.”

“So…assuming this works, what would you need? Where are the others?”

“That data is also missing.” Light Hope looked distant for a moment, as if trying to scrounge up a half-lost memory – which, Adora realised, was actually a pretty good summary. “The Maragraf facility holds a device that may be necessary for your mission. If you recover it, I can use it to locate the other runestones. It also has other properties that may be useful.”

“Maragraf. Okay. I’ll see what I can do.” Adora looked at the drone. “Can you spare any parts for Entrapta’s research? If we need to patch anything up, it’d be better if we knew how.”

Light Hope considered this. Finally, she said, “I will have those components I can spare deposited into the appropriate section of your ship.”

The drone bounced back into the conversation. “Eeeeeeeeeeeee thank you so much I can’t wait to get to grips with it-”

“Entrapta, calm down,” Adora told her.

Light Hope chimed. “I am picking up significant movement in the area near your ship. The energy signatures indicate primarily Horde technology.”

“The Horde’s found us?”

“That would be the logical inference.”

Adora tensed. “I should get back, but Perfuma-”

“She will come to no harm.” Light Hope looked Adora directly in the eyes for possibly the first time. “You are needed there. _Go_.”

* * *

“Who are you?” Perfuma asked, keeping her tone level. She was suspicious of the newcomer, of course, but that was no reason to be rude.

“You know who I am, Perfuma.” A warm smile spread over her doppelganger’s face. “You spent so long being me, back on Plumeria Prime.”

And she had. Years ago, light-years away, a much younger, much more rambunctious Perfuma had fought many imaginary battles with the Random Stick of Protection, dreaming of being a hero like the She-Ra.

But that Perfuma had grown up, taken up her duties, learned to protect the sanctity of life…and eventually been seized as a hostage by the Horde and dragooned into serving as biobay operator on a stolen prison transport. Having her show up, now an adult in full costume, was…disconcerting, to say the least.

“You wanted to be a hero, do you remember, Perfuma?” asked the duplicate. “You wanted to make things right. What changed?”

“I was a child then,” she said softly. “Everything in the stories could be solved with force and courage, but the world isn’t a story. A sword does not solve anything; the universe cannot be rebalanced by hitting it.”

“Is that why you won’t try to protect your friends?”

Perfuma jolted backwards. “I…I work hard in the biobay! They understand-”

“Yes, they’re very understanding. They don’t judge you for not fighting.” A knife-like grin slashed across the doppelganger’s face, the expression far from a natural fit for Perfuma’s features. “But it’s not their judgment that’s eating at you, is it? It’s yours. You don’t like that you spend your time sheltered while other people get hurt to protect you. You hate it, don’t you?”

“I…”

“Don’t you?”

“Yes!” Perfuma exploded. “Yes, I hate it!” She calmed herself with visible effort. “But what can I do? I never learned to do battle like the others did. I learned to govern, and to garden. Not to fight.”

“Your friends are in danger now, Perfuma. But the Heart-Blossom can help you defend them.” The razored edges fell off the smile, leaving it much warmer and more genuine. “All you need to do is accept it.”

Perfuma eyed her doppelganger warily. “I won’t kill. All life is prescious.”

“Don’t worry, Perfuma. The Heart-Blossom doesn’t want you to kill; it only wants you to fight.”

* * *

Adora emerged from the woods to find what looked like a full-scale war unfolding at the foot of the _Protector_ ’s ramp.

The local Horde garrison had moved out en masse, but while Apocyn was an occupied world, it wasn’t a heavily militarised one – they apparently hadn’t gone for the heavy armoured vehicles, so this was mostly an infantry force. The sparse trees were providing minimal cover for Glimmer and Bow, who were laying down covering fire;

Adora moved like lightning. A shot into a parked skimmer’s exposed power coils created a loud noise and a fireball to distract the troops, and she headed for the ship, quickly and efficiently taking out a small squad as she moved – they weren’t expecting an attack from that direction, and someone had left a stun prod on the ground nearby.

Glimmer had taken up position behind a crashed skimmer; it looked like a civilian design. From the whistle of arrows overhead, Bow was a little further away, taking advantage of his arrow’s trajectories.

“Hey, Glimmer,” she said, venting the carbine’s waste heat. “I take it you had an eventful journey?”

“Delivery went fine, but I had to go and get creative.” Glimmer fired another shot, and a pained shriek told Adora that it had found a mark – probably not a lethal one, admittedly. “Spotted a Horde propaganda station that looked vulnerable. Turned out it wasn’t heavily defended because the garrison was nearby. How about you?”

“Found out a lot about what they want me to do, didn’t accomplish anything else. Where’s Double Trouble?”

“They’re on the ship. Cracked some bones; apparently they can’t just shapeshift out of those. Perfuma?”

Adora fired a shot, and winged a Horde soldier: they’d live, but they wouldn’t be operating anything that required both hands any time soon. “I don’t know! Light Hope said she’d been sent to take some sort of test, to attune to something called the Heart-Blossom! Entrapta couldn’t figure out much about it either!”

“Well, at least you’re not seeing things,” said Glimmer sardonically, pulling the trigger; a Horde soldier dived for cover as bark sprayed from the tree the blast hit. “You’re just gullible.”

“I really thought she was going to help us-”

The earth moved.

Adora and Glimmer were thrown against each other as the ground beneath their feet convulsed. Vines erupted from it, pulling down Horde transport skimmers and ripping weapons from hands; metal groaned and tore under the relentless pressure of furious life.

The Horde withdrawal was fast and undignified. Strangely, the vines seemed to come to the defence of any who faltered and fell, preventing them from being trampled under the feet of their erstwhile squadmates.

As a calm descended on what had, moments before, been the thick of the fray, a bud appeared from a particularly thick tangle of vines. In moments, it grew to the size of Entrapta’s navigational sphere, hints of pink petals appearing at the edges, before it opened into a tremendous flower…revealing a figure with woody brown skin, pink flowers dotting the vines growing from her head.

“Perfuma!” Adora raced to the flower, her eyes bugging out of her head. “Thank the stars you’re all right! What happened?”

“I would prefer not to talk about it, Adora.” Perfuma’s voice was gentle, at least. “But whatever it was, it seemed to want to ask me a question.”

“And then?”

Smiling enigmatically, Perfuma said, “I think I gave the right answer.”

* * *

“You’re sure she said Maragraf?” demanded Glimmer. “It couldn’t have been any other system?”

“I heard it pretty clearly.” Wrinkles formed on Adora’s brow. “Why? What’s wrong wih Maragraf?”

“Uh.” Glimmer looked beseechingly at Bow.

“People think Maragraf is cursed,” said the dark-skinned man. “Horde patrols don’t go there, civilian vehicles keep disappearing, drones don’t come back. It’s still on the charts, but it’s covered in hazard flags.”

“Light Hope seemed to really want me to go there,” said Adora. “I dunno, maybe it’s a defence system? If she was trying to hurt us, she had a really good opportunity on Apocyn.”

“It’s really dangerous-”

“We’re going,” said Glimmer decisively.

Both of them turned to look at her: Adora in confusion, Bow in shock.

“Guys. I don’t believe in curses. And if the Horde won’t patrol there, that’s the biggest danger we have to deal with out of the way.” Glimmer’s voice was like steel. “We know Adora’s visions aren’t hallucinations now, and she’s right – if we were being lured into a trap, why would she give Perfuma superpowers instead of just disposing of her?” Her tone softened as she saw Bow’s expression. “We’ll be careful, maybe steal a hypershuttle or something instead of taking the _Protector_ in.”

Entrapta’s voice came over the comms. “I’ve plotted a course. The good news is, we don’t need to double back or anything, it’s on the way. The bad news is, we’d have to pass through a couple of pretty risky systems on the way in if we didn’t wanna add a lot of time. Not all of them are Horde, either; Maragraf is near some pretty nasty pirate enclaves.”

“Keep us as safe as possible, then, but we _are_ going there.” Glimmer favoured them with her cockiest grin. “I want to know everything this grid can do. Who knows? We may be able to find a way to use it against the Horde.”

* * *

“Report came in from Apocyn, Shadow Weaver,” said Catra, the faintest hint of mockery in her tone. “The garrison commander reported some kind of rapid-growing plant attack swept them away from the _Constrictor_ and bought our quarry an opportunity to flee. He’s been assigned an appropriate punishment, of course; if he’s going to lie, it should at least be a good one. From sensor readings and my tracker, they appear to be heading towards Jonos – probably one of the pirate-held systems. I doubt they’d be trying anything in the Horde settlements – they’re just too heavily fortified, thanks to the pirates – and Maragraf has a lot of alert flags pinned on it. We should probably target the pirate enclaves, cut off their allies-”

“Wrong, Catra,” said Shadow Weaver, sounding more disappointed than angry. “They will be making their way towards Maragraf – probably via Morlax. Have a course laid in to intercept them there.”

“Uh…are you sure? It would make a lot more sense for them to work their way around through Gorron or-”

“Do not think to second-guess me, Catra!” _Now_ Shadow Weaver sounded angry. “You have your orders. Have the navigators plot a course to Morlax at once!”

“Aye-aye, ma’am,” said Catra, delivering a salute that thrummed with all the energy of a raised middle finger.

* * *

Adora’s jaw dropped as she stepped into the biobay. The planting trays, which had been half-grown just a few days ago, were now overflowing – the plants were growing so quickly Adora could _see_ the leaves sprouting.

“Adora! Hello!” Perfuma beamed to see the other woman there. “I was testing out the powers the Heart-Blossom gave me. The biobay is growing faster than ever before, and the plants are amazingly healthy – but it’s hardly draining any nutrients from the soil. It’s amazing.”

“Entrapta must be having a field day,” said Adora drily.

“A drone took very detailed images for her research. I hope she can get what she wants from it.” Perfuma reached out and plucked a fruit from its vine, a gnarled, warty silvery-green thing. “Klethyd fruit? They taste much better than they look.”

“Thanks.” As Adora bit into the fruit, which had a pleasant tartness to it, she glanced over to the small table that she’d learned held Perfuma’s _other_ plants. It mostly held flowers that didn’t produce food or anything, but she had to admit that the few that were sprouting looked pretty. These looked almost exactly like they had last time Adora had been here. “You didn’t use your new powers on these?”

“The planting trays are for everyone: everyone’s air, everyone’s food. It makes sense to speed them along.” A gentle smile appeared on Perfuma’s face. “Those are mine. Gardening is precious to me; it helps me balance myself. If you could teleport a ship to its destination, would you not still fly with the controls, simply for the joy of it?”

“I suppose that makes sense.” Adora thought for a moment. “It’s kind of funny, now that I think about it. The Horde would say that you have work with plants, and I have to be a pilot, because that’s what someone decided we would be best at. And you like gardening, and I like flying…but we’re fighting against them, because even if _we_ fit the roles they’d give us, other people don’t, and they shouldn’t be forced to.”

“An interesting thought.” Perfuma reached up, and then lowered her hand. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t like to be touched.”

“No, it’s okay,” said Adora, her eyes flicking downwards. “Truth be told, I…I want to get more comfortable with it. Everyone here is so…just fine with it – okay, except Mermista. In the Horde, contact was always about power – but it’s not like that here, and I don’t want to keep hauling Horde instincts into places where they tell me the wrong thing.”

“You don’t have to be touched if you don’t want to, Adora.”

“No, I want to.” She forced her eyes up to meet Perfuma’s. “I don’t want to just be what the Horde made me. I want to get better.”

“All right, then.”

The hand Perfuma put on Adora’s shoulder was gentle, but it didn’t bring with it a deep connection or anything of the sort. But it was contact, and Adora barely flinched at all. She had to consider that progress.

Adora ate the rest of the fruit on the way back to her quarters.

* * *

“Hi wildcat!” said Scorpia, beaming; she’d pulled the nickname out of her ass in the last few days, and it set Catra’s teeth just a little bit on edge. The big woman managed to hush herself with visible effort. “I did some digging, and I’ve got a few bits and pieces on this Hordak fella.”

Catra’s eyes lit up. “Finally, some answers. What have you got for me?”

“Well, there isn’t much. A lot of my contacts told me to forget I’d ever heard that name, suggested running away and changing my name if I kept going, that kind of thing, but I did get a couple of answers. Word is that his name keeps popping up on weird orders, usually flagged with Intelligence and a code that doesn’t line up with any of the standard divisions but still works. He’ll send troops to secure old ruins, authorise payments to smugglers in exchange for crates that nobody’s allowed to look into, have researchers reassigned to his projects, that kind of thing. No-one’s sure what he’s after, and everyone who was willing to talk had a theory. I like the one where he’s secretly building a zombie army.”

“So, a high-ranking officer who gives weird orders. We already knew that much,” said Catra sourly.

Scorpia looked around in a ludicrous pantomime of subtly trying to make sure they weren’t being watched; it was only the time she’d spent in Scorpia’s presence that convinced her the Force Captain was serious. “It’s all I could get. As I said, my contacts really got spooked when I started asking about this guy!”

Catra made a noise like venting steam as she suppressed her irritation. “Okay. Thanks. Did anyone mention Morlax or Maragraf?”

Scorpia thought for a moment. “You know, someone did. I did some volunteer missions for Commander Vesselak while serving under her a couple of years back, she owed me a favour, she was stationed in Morlax about twenty years ago. Says an order from Hordak required her to give full assistance to an unusual-looking ship that swept in, headed for Maragraf, and then apparently came back afterwards. Almost nothing that goes to Maragraf came back, so it was pretty memorable!” She shook her head. “Apparently the captain then picked up some medical supplies, mostly stuff related to genetics, and headed off.”

“Did she get a look at whoever was in the ship? They could be a lead.”

“She couldn’t recall the codes, and it didn’t stay long, but she did say that close imaging showed a woman in a mask piloting the ship, apparently alone.”

“A woman in a mask, huh?” An image loomed in Catra’s mind. A very, very familiar woman in a mask.

But that didn’t make sense. It couldn’t have been Shadow Weaver flying off solo to a cursed system. The very idea was absurd.

Wasn’t it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now you know why I had to specify that it wasn't a no-powers AU, just one where they didn't have powers _yet_.
> 
> Thanks again for reading! I'm also working on a side project that's going to be a Treasure Planet kind of AU, currently titled The Treasure of Horde Prime, so keep an eye out for that, and as ever keep an eye out for stuff by curiousscientistkae, Athetos144, EtherianFrigatebird and Say_Anything!


	8. Breaking the Heist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew of the _Protector_ are hired to steal some information from a research lab during their visit to Carnox - but it turns out that the information is a near-complete cure for a terrible disease!

Adora hadn’t seen the inside of many people’s cabins. She didn’t want to pry, and in any case, with the layout of the ship, she was pretty close to the bridge and the elevator, so she didn’t need to go past them much.

Being summoned to Glimmer’s room was thus an unusual experience.

She rapped her knuckles on the door and said, “You wanted me, Glimmer?”

The door slid open.

Glimmer had put rather more effort into decorating her place than Adora had. The crescent symbol of Brightmoon was painted on one wall, and a broken pot – it looked like one of Perfuma’s, Mermista had said she’d smashed a couple while she’d been saving the ship – was sitting on her desk alongside a small pile of tools, probably stolen at some point along their travels. Glimmer was working through some sort of sword drill – the weapon, a light assemblage that Glimmer was holding in one hand, looked like it was made of spare scrap, but then, Adora wasn’t really an expert on swords or swordplay.

Glimmer turned to face Adora, lowering the sword. She was fairly lightly dressed, giving Adora a good look at the full extent of her feathers – a downy coat that extended down her arms and onto her thighs, sparkling in the room lighting. A faint shimmer of sweat adorned her forehead; apparently the drill had been energetic. “Thanks for coming, Adora. I just wanted to…have a private word with you. Please, come in.”

Adora stepped through, and the door slid shut behind her. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No, I just…I wanted to ask something.” Her tone was level, but there was a tension in it. “I’ve noticed that you’ve been a lot more _touchy_ lately – no, that’s not quite the right word. You’ve been getting a bit more touchy-feely with Bow and Perfuma, and I can see why you wouldn’t be doing this with Mermista or Double Trouble. I just wanted to know…why not me? You still jolt away if I get too close.”

Shit.

She looked down. “I’m sorry. This is pretty intrusive, isn’t it? If you’d prefer not to answer, that’s okay. I shouldn’t have called you here just to-”

“No, I’m sorry. It’s…I’m sorry.” Adora studied the deck, resisting the urge to kick herself for being such a starsdamn idiot. “The Horde…Do you know what it believes, deep down? What it teaches people like me?”

“Not in detail.”

“Okay.” Adora took a deep breath, and continued, “To the Horde, every species has a _role_ – something it’s specialised for. Plumerians for farming. Scorpioni for combat. Primes for command.”

“I know that much,” said Glimmer, in the manner of one who knows that something really bad is coming but isn’t sure what.

“Now, imagine, when you have this rigid model of what people should be, what you think of people who don’t fit. People who sit on the line between multiple boxes. People who, for example, come from two different species.”

“People like me.” Glimmer’s voice was flat.

“Yeah.” Adora threw up her hands. “And I know they’re wrong! Every single teacher I had with the Horde was full of shit! I’ve been working to unlearn this stuff, but I haven’t got there yet. And I’m really sorry; you don’t deserve that, and I don’t want to make excuses. I’m sorry.” She held out an arm. “Please. If it helps.”

“You’re sure?”

“I want to stare down this stupid part of me that hasn’t figured this shit out and tell it _no, you don’t get to do that_.”

Adora expected a gentle pat or maybe a touch on the hand. She wasn’t expecting a hug.

The scruff of feathers around Glimmer’s neck tickled, and her scent filled Adora’s nose. The hated part of her that was still clinging to the Horde garbage didn’t seem to be saying _anything_ , but then again that would have required some part of her brain to actually work; it seemed content to just take this in.

“You’ve already come so far, Adora,” murmured Glimmer. “Thank you. For everything.”

Adora’s brain made a noise like a thruster failing to come online.

“Uh.” Adora’s and Glimmer’s heads turned in unison to the drone that had scurried through the door. “Is this a bad time?”

Glimmer let go with a frustrated sigh. “No, it’s okay, Entrapta,” she said in an it’s-not-okay-at-all kind of voice. “What do you need?”

“I was wondering if I could have a sample of Adora’s DNA. I need it for a project.”

“Why?” said Adora sarcastically. “You’re not gonna clone me, are you?”

“…I need it for _two_ projects.” Both of them looked daggers at the drone, and it shifted backwards. “Okay, okay, no cloning. Unless…”

Adora’s voice was level as she said, “No.”

“All right, one project. You remember how Light Hope gave us all those bits of First One tech? And you remember how it mostly reacts to you?”

“Yes…”

“Well, it’s not reacting to me.”

“Could it be the drone?” threw in Glimmer. “Maybe it can’t pick those up as effectively.”

“No, I’ve used my organic hands a few times. No effects.” The drone visibly perked up. “So I made something for it! It’s kind of a glove that overwrites your DNA with a sampled one. I can’t make it work with machines for some reason – I’m working on it – but it’d be really useful!”

Adora and Glimmer looked at each other, before Glimmer shrugged.

“Uh…sure, Entrapta,” said Adora. “You’re not gonna steal my identity or anything, right?”

“How could I steal your identity? You’re a lot taller than me.”

“Okay. Do you need my blood, or will hair do?”

“Just a thumbprint!” The drone presented a device, basically a small metal shape with a square panel on it, and Adora, keenly aware of the ridiculousness of the situation, pressed her thumb against it. “Thankyou! You’re not gonna regret it, I promise!” The drone turned to leave, then spun back around. “Oh! And do you mind if I do some work on that fighter you stole? I should be able to overhaul it into something a lot stronger.”

“Sure, I guess-”

“You’re not gonna regret this!” warbled the drone as it spun around. The feet clattered against the deck.

Adora gestured towards the broken pot, sitting forlornly on the desk. “Just out of curiosity…why is that there?”

“The pot? It’s…I’ll tell you about it later, okay?” Glimmer gave Adora’s wrist a friendly squeeze. “I think we’re heading in for a landing, so we should probably get ready. And I need to change; can’t have the Horde spotting me by these feathers.” She winked at Adora. “Awesome though they are.”

As the door slid closed behind Adora again, she took that entire encounter – the hug, the wink, all of it – and mentally filed it for later. She was pretty sure that something big had happened there, and also that she had no idea what that something was.

* * *

Crater City, on Karnox, was entirely misnamed – the structure it was built inside was an enormous sinkhole, rather than a crater, and it was closer to a hive or an arcology than anything technically resembling a proper city. As the _Protector_ swept in, it put Adora in mind of a giant dagger hilt, jutting out of a wound in the planet’s crust.

Stretched out around the sinkhole was a vast ocean of green and gold trees, fading into a desert in the distance. Double Trouble gestured to it and said, “I wouldn’t advise going on a nature ramble, darlings. I did some work here once, and when people annoyed the local crime lords, they’d throw them out into the jungle. Sometimes parts of them even made it back.”

“Hostile wildlife?” said Glimmer warily.

“‘Hostile’ is something of an understatement, your highness. ‘Vicious’ or perhaps ‘sadistic’ might be a better word.” The shapeshifter shuddered. “While I was here, I had to spend a week undercover as a zookeeper. I was lucky to get out without scars.”

“Couldn’t you just shapeshift your way out of them?” said Adora, her forehead wrinkling.

“If only, darling. Scar tissue can’t shift; it’s not structured right.” Double Trouble struck an overdramatic pose, the back of one hand pressed to their brow in a pantomime of despair. “A tremendous waste of my talents, I’m sure you would agree.”

The comms system buzzed, and a clicking sound issued from Entrapta’s spherical cocoon. “I’m picking up some warning beacons. Apparently Crater City is about the only city here that’s safe to visit; most of the others are in quarantine lockdown. Some lung disease.”

* * *

Adora felt more than a little out of place on Karnox.

Most of the worlds that they’d visited so far had been settled. They may have had a bias towards a specific species, but they were generally pretty diverse.

Karnox was different. The planet was a species homeworld – the Karnoxians, specifically, a species of tall, powerfully-built humanoids that had always put Adora in mind of snakes. Most of them were brown, green or a dull red, and some sported hood-like structures or oddly shaped tails that rattled faintly as they moved.

“Bit of a change for you, huh?” said Glimmer, her tone slightly acidic in a sort of affectionate way. “You get to be one of the short ones like the rest of us for a while.”

“It must be throwing her off her game disastrously, your highness.” Double Trouble’s eyes flicked around the area. “Is any of this graffiti what you’re looking for?”

“No. I’m guessing there’s not much of a rebel presence here.” A smile danced on Glimmer’s face as they saw a guard in Horde uniform, desperately clinging to a wall and trying not to be noticed. Every single local to walk past, except for the hatchlings, was noticeably taller. “I assume with the portal being a long way away and everyone being built like a brick wall it’s not worth the effort to come down hard.”

“Well, darlings, if we can’t find your friends…” Shark-like teeth glinted in the corridor’s sterile fluorescent lights. “Perhaps we can get some work from mine.”

* * *

The crime lord Sschisz’s face was at least thirty percent scar tissue. His right eye was a gleaming prosthetic, three prongs extending back along his face – it put Adora in mind of a claw. The glowing red dot of the eye was mirrored by a large, vile-smelling cheroot, a faint green flame dancing on the end.

“Ah, Sschisz, darling,” opened Double Trouble, striking their most outgoing stance. “I see your brood-father’s retired. Hunting proceeding well, I trust-” They ducked under a clumsy grab from one of the guards. “Can’t we have this discussion without the hostilities, darling?”

“You got a lot of nerve showin’ your face around here, Metamaran,” said Sschisz, in a voice midway between a snarl and the sound of water running down a drain. “Everyone here knows what you did.”

“Really, darling, there’s no need to be upset.” Double Trouble wagged a finger. “There’s especially no need to be upset enough to blow all my secrets.”

“Don’t see why not. You blew all of ours.”

“Not _all_ of them! A couple of tip-offs to rivals about your worst-planned excursions hardly qualifies as _all_ of your secrets.” Double Trouble’s attempt to bat their eyes at Sschisz would probably have been more effective if they hadn’t nictitated in the middle. “I mean, really, darling, you didn’t give me much choice. The amount you were paying for my services, obviously I had to make up the difference somehow.”

Sschisz’s face tightened into a scowl as he considered this. “You really are perpetually full of it, aren’t you, Double Trouble?”

“‘It’ being talent, I trust.” Double Trouble donned their customary smirk. “Look, darling, I know you need some work done; everyone in the business does. Why don’t we cut to the chase? My allies and I need work, and you definitely have work that needs doing. You can take a cut out of the payment if it satisfies your sense of propriety.”

The prosthesis pulsed faintly as the Karnoxian mulled this over. “…Fine. I actually do need something done. But if you screw us…” That blunt, crocodilian snout shifted into a cold smile, and Sschisz gestured over his shoulder at one of his offsiders – a taller-than-usual Karnoxian with prominent blue markings on his red-scaled arms. “If you screw us, Tung Lashor gets to break whichever part of you he likes.”

“Tung Lashor would have difficulty breaking a vase,” muttered Double Trouble. “All right, darling; what do you need?”

“Up the Spire, there’s a research lab. I want what Terak’s team is working on – specifically. Get me everything, don’t leave anything in theirs.”

“R&D seems a little out of your usual area of expertise, darling,” Double Trouble noted. “Is Terak working on a new technique for breaking legs?”

“We’ve got a buyer who’s interested – why the hell am I telling you?” Sschisz shook some ash off the end of his cigar. “All you gotta know is that you bring it to me and you get paid.”

* * *

“I’ve done some digging, darling,” said Double Trouble, as they sat around a table in a dingy bar. Adora had tried a relatively mild drink; after seeing her expression, Glimmer had immediately ordered a glass of water for her. “Buying drinks for people, sometimes picking their pockets while they’re distracted, that sort of thing. There is indeed a research compound in the spire. Horde-run, but using local contractors. Mostly medical and biotech.”

“Do they do bioweapons?” said Bow. “That might explain why it’s valuable.” He shook his head and added, “I still don’t think we should be doing this.”

“And how would I have found that out from asking in bars?” Double Trouble said peevishly. “I appreciate that you have such confidence in my skills, darling, but I can only do so much!”

“So we need to get inside,” said Glimmer. “DT, I think this is your department?”

“Love to, can’t. I swung past their entrance; they have DNA scanners.” Double Trouble’s tail twitched. “But they’re hiring, and it’s been a while since we last saw the _Fright Zone_ or another big pursuit, so we can afford to spend a few days on this. Mostly, they’re hiring security – they want combat training and a decent amount of brawn.”

Adora became uncomfortably aware that Glimmer and Double Trouble were both looking at her.

Glimmer opened a channel to the ship and said, “Entrapta? We’re going to need to tear you away from your projects. We need some discreet recording devices…”

* * *

The bored-looking Horde functionary idly flicked through the file she was holding. “Well, Ms Reccula, your references are good and you have the experience.” Adora, whose references and experience were entirely fabricated, nodded awkwardly; the job interview had been so far outside her comfort zone it had almost hurt. “We’ll just need to give you another test, and then we can talk about the job.”

“I had expected the process to take longer,” said Adora before she could stop herself.

“Yeah, well, we had a bunch of support get reallocated,” said the functionary. With her brown skin and cornrows, she could have been Lonnie’s sister; for all Adora knew, she was. (She shut _that_ thought down right away; this was absolutely not the time to speculate on whether or not she had any blood relatives she’d never met out there.) “Some fleet bigwig called it away; a commodore or something. So we need reinforcements PDQ.”

“Okay. So what is the final test?”

“Testing room’s over th – oh, yeah, you don’t have a bioprint in the system.” She waved a scanner at Adora. “Thumbprint here, please, we’ll use this to give you a system entry if you pass.” She smiled, technically, when Adora pressed her thumb onto the device. “Okay, go through the testing door and we’ll see what happens.”

* * *

_What happens_ , apparently, was that Adora would be attacked by a beefy Karnoxian as she stepped into a gunmetal-grey room with a few tables around the place.

She sidestepped a brutal vertical swipe from the Karnoxian’s stun prod. She was definitely outmatched in size and strength, but if she could get a weapon, she could even the odds…

Her eye fell on a chair – a metal construction with four legs. That looked workable.

She hurled herself out of the way of another swing, this one diagonal, and snatched up the chair, bringing it up as a parry. She grunted as the stun prod hit it, the green lightning crackling over her skin – the metal construction meant it wasn’t insulating her much from the weapon. Oh well. She’d have to do her best.

As the Karnoxian took another swing, Adora ducked under it and pulled. The chair was cheaply constructed, and the leg broke off rather than resist or bend.

Stepping around another blow, she scythed the improvised weapon into the Karnoxian’s green-scaled gut, then snatched the stun prod from his suddenly-limp fingers.

“Okay! Okay!” The Karnoxian held up his hands; each one was the size of Adora’s head. “You pass! Stop hitting me!”

Adora nodded and stepped out the door, presenting the deactivated stun prod to the functionary who had been handling her interview and was now looking at numbers on a portable datascreen.

“Let’s see here,” said the functionary, and fiddled with the screen. “Good reflexes, no major injuries, record time…They’re gonna take that chair out of your first pay, but you’re in. Your DNA scan was a bit weird, but honestly we aren’t in any position to be picky.” She nodded to Adora. “You start tomorrow. Your print’ll be good for the green ones; touch the red ones and we’ll shoot you. That’s not a joke, we actually will shoot you.”

“All right. Thanks.” Some instinct made her add, “I really need this job.”

“Whatever.”

* * *

The stills from Adora’s concealed cameras after her first couple of days of work were spread over a table, and Adora leaned over the table.

“So here are the basics.” She pointed at the map she’d drawn up. “I’ve only been allowed into a few areas. Getting clearance for the other areas is going to take months, and I don’t think we can afford that kind of time. But here’s what I’ve got.” She gestured to a dark-scaled figure. “She’s Terak. Seems nice enough. Gets very snippy if you don’t call her ‘doctor’. Her lab takes up most of the red section on this map, which I can’t get into because they have red DNA scanners and I don’t want to get shot. The ventilation’s also set up so that you can’t really climb in from outside. Unless we wanna beat up the security that’s already there, we’re going to need another way in.”

After a few moments of thought, Glimmer smacked a fist into her palm. “The DNA scanners!”

“I’m afraid I can’t fool those, your highness,” Double Trouble said in a cloying, almost sarcastically apologetic tone. “I can do a lot, but I can’t change my DNA!”

“Right. But Entrapta _can_.” Glimmer opened a channel to the ship. “Entrapta, I’m going to need your latest invention.”

“Do you mean the laser toaster or-” Entrapta seemed a little bit confused.

“I mean the DNA scanner!”

“ _Oooooh_. My _third_ latest invention.” Adora could almost hear Entrapta’s nod. “Okay, I’ll whip you up a copy.”

“They’re really cagey about security in the central lab,” said Adora, gesturing to the big empty space. “I don’t know what’s in there and I can’t exactly ask about it. We’re going to need to be careful.”

* * *

Two days later, Adora stuck her head around the corner. “See, I told you. We have five minutes. Come on.”

Glimmer, Bow and Double Trouble scurried after her as the mismatched group crept into the laboratory complex. Bow nodded as he saw the small black patch under the security sensors; Adora had put the rig in, and Entrapta was ensuring the cameras didn’t see them. (Mermista, whose arm had _mostly_ recovered by now, was on the ship giving Entrapta a reminder to focus, every five minutes. They did not need Entrapta to decide she was interested in finding out what the alarm sounded like.)

“Okay,” said Adora, and pulled on the DNA sequencer over the gloves she was already wearing. “Moment of truth.”

It felt like a week passed before the light above the scanner went green, and the door hissed open.

Bow, his eyes hidden behind a pair of red-tinted goggles, held his tracker-pad to the opening. He’d modified it specifically for this mission; the back was covered in an array of sensors, antennae and other technical parts, none of which Adora had the least chance of correctly identifying.

“Okay. I’m picking up…okay. Oh boy. This is going to be fun.” He pointed ahead. “There are detector grids along this corridor. Step through them without the right identifier, the alarm sounds.

“Hey! You!”

Moving with the fluid grace of an experienced archer and commando, Bow spun on his heel and threw a stun arrow at the guard who had just interrupted them, dropping her before she could sound the alarm.

“Okay,” he said, as the thud died away. “We need to move quickly. Adora, you find somewhere to hide that guard.” His eyes narrowed as he studied the screen of his tracker-pad. “Now how can we get past these grids…”

* * *

“Are you sure this is the best option, darling?” said Double Trouble. Bow had synced his goggles to his tracker-pad and handed them to the shapeshifter, and so their vision was overlaid with the detector grid – an irregularly spaced gauntlet of lines, locked into all sorts of angles.

The silence on the other end of the comms spoke volumes. Double Trouble sighed. “Yes, all right, all right. Hold on.” They concentrated, and black-green light flickered as their arm began to stretch, weaving its way around the grid’s lines. “Well. That was comparatively painless. Now for the tricky part…”

The light haloed Double Trouble’s entire body, and they began to slide through the grid, flowing drop by drop past the sensor lines. They were aware, in a general sort of way, that Adora was watching with a certain measure of distaste as their body weaved its way through the lock.

At last, it was over, and Double Trouble gave a sort of full-body shudder. “All right then, darlings. Phase two.” Moving like a snake, they made their way along the corridor.

There was a beep from behind them, and Bow said, “Watch out! Pressure pads!”

The goggles lit up a few irregularly spaced plates, and Double Trouble took a deep breath before making a disturbingly graceful leap over the area, landing in a pose straight out of a Brightmoon grand ballet. “Aaaand _dismount_.”

“Stop showing off and get a move on!” ordered Glimmer. “Security can’t be far off.”

“All right, all right,” grumbled Double Trouble. “I knew there was a reason I didn’t become a burglar…no style at all.” The shapeshifter wedged a clawed hand into a nearby grate and pulled, flipping it open.

* * *

“I think I broke a nail there, darlings,” said Double Trouble, examining their fingers as theatrically as possible. “You’re lucky I’m as good at this as I am; the security room was easy to find. The systems are off; now all we need to worry about are the guards.”

The group was crouched under a table in one of the exterior labs; Double Trouble had slithered through the door, face split by a broad smirk.

“All right,” said Glimmer with a nod. “Bow, over to you.”

Bow reached into his bag and pulled out a small metal ball. With a button press, it unfolded into a drone – a spherical, scuttling shape, its face dominated by a large scanner. “Okay. Let’s see how well this works.”

* * *

All Glimmer could say was, “You’re not serious.”

“Afraid so.” Bow gestured to his tracker-pad, which was relaying the central lab. “Pressure plates, sensor grids, DNA scanners, motion sensors, all on a separate circuit to the control room Double Trouble dealt with. You’d think they were locking down a bank vault.”

A grin spread across Double Trouble’s face. “Either these people have too much money, or whatever they’re working on is big.”

Bow fiddled with a control and said, “Bringing up the audio-” Double Trouble visibly spasmed, and Bow shut it down again. “Are you okay?”

“Focused ultrasonics,” managed Double Trouble, breathing heavily. “Probably a countermeasure for any species that can hear them.”

“Either that or they’re psychic and knew you were coming,” said Adora drily.

“Don’t even say that, darling. You’ll make it come true.”

“Hmm…” Glimmer rubbed her chin. “Could we get up above it through the ducts?”

Bow considered this. “Probably? But then we need to get down slowly enough that the motion detectors don’t go off.”

“We’ve got rope, don’t we?” said Glimmer, smirking confidently.

Bow didn’t like how she was looking at him.

* * *

They were lucky the ducts were as open as they were.

Adora was holding the end of the rope and watching the outside corridor through an opening in the grate. The length of high-tech rope was then held up by Glimmer, then tied around Bow’s torso. He was moving downwards at what felt like an inch a minute, although realistically it was at least a bit faster than that. Double Trouble was somewhere else in the vents, avoiding the ultrasonics.

Luckily, the primary computer in the lab was directly under a vent, a security vulnerability someone was probably going to be shot for. The rest of the lab seemed to consist of what looked like pathogen culture vats, racks of test tubes and testing equipment, chemical synthesisers and the like – the tools of biotechnology research.

Bow snapped horribly back to reality as Glimmer said, “I’m losing my grip!” He bit back a curse. If Glimmer lost her hold on the rope, he was going to crash into the computer, all the alarms would go off at once, and everything was going to go to hell very quickly.

The rope suddenly stabilised.

Glimmer’s voice sounded a lot louder than it was as she said, “Thanks, Double Trouble. I’ve got my grip back; you can get back out there now.”

“No problem, darlings,” replied Double Trouble, their voice pained, almost ragged.

At last, at long last, Bow was in position to use the computer. Moving with exaggerated care, he ran the DNA gadget over the scanner, and a light flickered green as the machine booted up. Slowly, carefully, he withdrew a datastick and inserted it; the program Entrapta had worked up would copy it to a storage bank on the _Protector_ , and then they could overload it from a distance and wipe the computer system. (Backups were Sschisz’s problem.)

“Okay,” said Bow, as Glimmer and Adora began to pull him up. “You have the transmission. Any idea what we just stole?”

There was a faint clicking sound from Entrapta’s end of the channel, and then she said, “Oh.” It was the kind of “oh” that drops into a conversation the same way an artillery shell drops into a trench.

“Oh? What do you mean, _oh_?” hissed Glimmer.

“This is medical research. Working on treating Thaymorian lung blight.”

Okay. That explained it. Lung blight was a killer, and a hugely infectious one at that. And an unspecified “lung disease” is exactly what you’d say if you were quarantining settlements for lung blight and didn’t want to cause a panic.

Bow nearly dropped his gear. “We have to put it back!”

“And why would we do that, darling?” Double Trouble shot back. “We still need money.”

“I’m not stealing medical research!”

“It’s not like they’re going to give it to everyone anyway!” Double Trouble’s scorn was almost a tangible force. “This is _the Horde_ , darling. The army that plucks children from their cots, the navy that bombs civilian targets. You really think they’re working on a treatment out of the goodness of their hearts?”

“Can you guys keep it down?” cut in Adora. “Security’s not far off!”

The snap of Glimmer’s fingers sounded very loud in the night. “Maybe the Horde is planning to weaponise the lung blight!”

“Quiet!” snapped Adora. “Security!”

The next thirty seconds or so felt like an hour. The shadow of the security guard hovered at the door; it could have been the shadow of the _Fright Zone_ and it wouldn’t have been more intimidating.

The sound of everyone present breathing out was almost deafening. Then the squabble continued as if there had been no interruption.

“So what are our options?” Glimmer began counting them off on her fingers. “We put it back, Sschisz kills us and the Horde starts using lung blight as a weapon. We take it to Sschisz, we get a bag of cash and he flogs the cure to his buyers, who we know nothing about but are probably not the most public-spirited people.”

“That would be a safe bet, your highness. You don’t get that kind of money honestly, and even if you could, you wouldn’t be spending it on getting Sschisz to do you favours.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Bow. “The Brightmoon throne isn’t exactly poor…”

Double Trouble smirked. “You think royalty comes by money honestly? How have you stayed this sheltered for this long?” They tapped their long, clawed fingers on their chin. “If I had to guess, I’d say that Sschisz’s backer is in it for the money. Make the cure, flog it to the wealthy in quarantine – if they’re afraid for their lives, they’ll part with any amount of money, as any stick-up artist will tell you.”

Everyone was looking at Glimmer at this point. “Put it back, it’ll probably be misused and we’ll have to fight our way clear. Don’t put it back, it’ll definitely be misused but we can afford some more supplies.” Everyone was looking at Glimmer, but Glimmer was looking at Bow. “What do we do?”

* * *

Several hours, a meeting with Sschisz and a few purchases of off-the-shelf electronics later, Glimmer was sitting on the bridge of the _Protector_ , checking the accounts.

“Okay,” she said, grinning. “We’ve picked up the supplies we need, and there’s enough that we can afford some personal stuff as well. How long do you think it’s going to be until the broadcast starts?”

Bow started to count on his fingers as he said, “Five. Four. Three. Two. One…”

The comms crackled, and Entrapta piped up with, “Broadcast confirmed. Everyone on Karnox just got access to that data.”

“Sschisz is probably sschitting himself right now,” purred Double Trouble, earning a dirty look from Glimmer. The shapeshifter turned to face Bow. “I may have underestimated you, darling. You have _quite_ an edge under the I’m-so-nice-and-friendly routine. Screwing the Horde _and_ Sschisz in one gesture from off-planet? The only way it could be more perfect is if we were able to watch somehow.”

Entrapta coughed awkwardly. “I am actually picking up a transmission from Sschisz. Apparently he’s sending Tung Lashor out to kill us.” There was a pause of a few seconds. “The rest of it is some really nasty threats and bad language. I don’t even think my head would _fit_ there.”

“Do we have a jump plotted?” asked Glimmer.

“We’re headed out in about five minutes.” Entrapta thought for a moment. “When we go to Maragraf, we should probably go through Morlax. It’s Horde-held, but it’s not exactly a stronghold, and the main inhabited planet has a really large First One ruin.”

Glimmer nodded decisively. “All right. Lay in a course.”

“Will do! I’ve locked in a double jump to throw off any pursuers – we have enough fuel – and then we should be able to have a look around in Ribnoss. It’s a pretty significant industrial world, so we should be able to take on technical supplies cheaply.”

* * *

Adora rapped her knuckles on the door and said, “You wanted me, Glimmer?”

The door slid open.

Glimmer was wearing what appeared to be a homemade smock, of all things. “Adora! Glad you could make it. I want to show you something. Please, come in. Sit down.”

As Adora sat down in the chair – the back was a little strange – Glimmer opened a drawer and reached in. “You wanted to know about the pot on my desk. Here.”

The item in Glimmer’s hands was a small ceramic bowl; it looked like it came from Terzos. The bowl was full of cracks, but those cracks were full of gold, its scars gleaming like tiny suns in the artificial light.

“It’s beautiful,” said Adora.

“My dad taught me this when I was a kid.” Glimmer handed Adora the bowl. “Apparently some of his ancestors brought this with them from the human homeworld, and they’ve kept that tradition going for generations. When I’d accidentally break a plate or something, Mom would be upset, but Dad would always clean it up and make it more beautiful than before it broke.”

“So is he…” Adora let her voice trail off. She didn’t want to finish that question.

“Dead.” Glimmer’s voice wavered. “He went out to fight the Horde when I was a kid and never came back.”

“I’m sorry.” It felt so inadequate to say.

“Don’t be. You wouldn’t have been any older than I was; you couldn’t have done anything.” She held out a hand, and Adora passed her the bowl. “But when I really need to remember him, I work on this. I picked up some bits and pieces on a few of the worlds we were on.”

Adora’s voice was barely above a whisper when she said, “Can you teach me?”

“I’ll try.” She reached into another drawer and took out a small bag; on inspection, it held a broken cup. “Okay. Sit down over here. The lacquer I use is in here…”

* * *

A long way away, the bulbous mass of the _Fright Zone_ glinted in the twin stars of the Morlax system – the red glow of its primary and the golden light of the secondary gave an odd sheen to the green-tinted hull.

Catra waited outside Shadow Weaver’s door, her tail lashing with so much agitation she half-expected it to crack like a whip. She gritted her teeth and tried to still it, but somehow concentrating on being less agitated wasn’t magically making it so.

Finally, the door slid open, and Catra stepped through. The commodore’s desk was piled high with paperwork, but she appeared to be ignoring it – she was sitting at a separate table, to one side of her primary desk, studying a chunk of jet-black crystal through a very large lens.

“Random database check pulled up a result,” she told the commodore. “Perfect match for Adora’s DNA on Karnox. Some crappy little research base that keeps putting in absurd expense reports. We can probably get there in a few days, catch the _Constrictor_ and maybe smack down whoever makes the purchasing decisions-”

“No.” Shadow Weaver put the magnifier away, apparently satisfied with the state of the crystal. “We pursued her across several sectors, and all it accomplished was to burn fuel. Chasing the _Constrictor_ isn’t working. So _now_ , we are going to try the _smart_ option. We’re going to wait for them to come to us.”

 _Chasing them was your starsdamned idea in the first place_ , Catra didn’t say. “Yes ma’am. Just thought you should know, though, the troops are gonna get restless if we just sit here in a half-deserted system for ages.”

“Then ensure their restlessness doesn’t imperil our task, Catra. I assure you, this task is worth much more than your life.”

“On it,” hissed Catra, and headed out. There had to be _something_ other than just sitting around waiting she could do…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The artform Glimmer is talking about at the end here is a real Japanese tradition known as "kintsugi".
> 
> Also, if you check out the first chapter, you'll see that there is now a poster, which was commissioned from the brilliant [EtherianFrigatebird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EtherianFrigatebird/pseuds/EtherianFrigatebird). Check out her stuff if you haven't already, and as ever, shout-outs to [curiousscientistkae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/curiousscientistkae/pseuds/curiousscientistkae), [Say_Anything](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Say_Anything/pseuds/Say_Anything) and [athetos144](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Athetos144/pseuds/Athetos144).


	9. Scarlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The _Protector_ visits the industrial world of Ribnoss, and Glimmer is wounded during a firefight.
> 
> Meanwhile, Catra goes pirate hunting.

“Two stars and four planets. Binary system, read them and weep,” said Double Trouble, grinning like a shark.

“Dammit.” Mermista threw her cards on the pile. “We should have a rule against using other people’s faces against them.”

“Just think of it as a chance to learn your tells, darling,” purred Double Trouble. The shapeshifter had a much larger pile of currency than everyone else – a mixture of Horde scrip notes, crimson skulls and silver lunes from Brightmoon.

“At least you have some of your money left.”

Mermista shot Adora a disdainful look and said, “Your face is entirely made up of tells. Why were you even playing this game?”

“It looked like fun,” said Adora with a shrug.

Glimmer’s head popped around the corner, her grin rivalling Double Trouble’s. “Guys, I may have something we can do on Ribnoss once we’ve taken on supplies.”

“Soak up the local pollution?” said Mermista, just as Double Trouble said, “There’s a good theatre district?”

“Ribnoss doesn’t just produce technical supplies; it also makes weapons and vehicles. Some discreet sabotage could cause all sorts of problems.” Her eyes twinkled. “And that would _solve_ all sorts of problems for everyone else.”

“So what’s the plan?” said Bow, scooping up the cards and starting to shuffle. “Hit the factory itself?”

Glimmer shook her head and said, “I’d expect it to be too heavily guarded. But you can’t guard the entire power grid. We hit some key junctions, drop the power to the factory. Minimal collateral damage, maximum effort to repair.”

“I mean…” Double Trouble rose from their seat, and their tail flicked through the air. “Why not just hit the reactors? The standard Horde model is surprisingly easy to sabotage.”

“And you know this from experience?” Bow demanded.

“Let’s just say that I know a guy, darling.” Double Trouble’s grin was somehow more unnerving than usual. “It’d ensure the longest shutdown and cause the most disruption to Horde nonsense.”

“The fallout could kill so many people!” said Bow, his expression aghast. Perfuma didn’t look any happier, and even Mermista was having trouble keeping a straight face.

Double Trouble squinted at them and said, “It’s _Ribnoss_ , darling. Nobody there is living much past their prime anyway. If you want to cause maximum disruption to the Horde, that’s how you’d do it-”

“No.” Glimmer nodded to Bow. “Bow’s right. Our job is to help these people, not use them as collateral sacrifices. We take down the grid with precision strikes.”

“Oh, very well, your highness, but you’ll have to do it without me.” Double Trouble’s hand came up in the attitude of a prima donna fainting onstage. “I simply cannot tolerate the atmosphere – or the rain.” And just like that, the drama was gone. “No, I really mean it, I can only handle so much polluted air and water.”

“So you’re not just mad you won’t get to commit an atrocity, then,” said Bow.

“My time will come, darling.”

* * *

“The pilots are becoming unruly, Catra,” said Shadow Weaver. Catra’s eyes flicked over the room decoration, settling on the stone hand in some sort of glass container that had always confused her.

“I have a proposal for that.” Catra forced herself to be calm. Can’t let Shadow Weaver know how much she wanted this. “Things are getting a bit rambunctious-” stars, what an awful word, she had to never say that again – “because we’ve been hanging around in this system for too long. If you don’t use fighter wings for anything, the pilots are going to be troublesome, you should know that by now.”

Shadow Weaver’s glare told Catra that she’d miscalculated. “Anyway, my proposal is fairly simple: we take the _Fright Zone_ and go bust up a pirate system. We can get there and back fairly quickly, it’ll make the Horde presence in neighbouring systems safer, it’ll make sure the fighter crews are focused, and it’ll mean the fight when we get the _Constrictor_ dead to rights isn’t interrupted.”

Not for the first time, Shadow Weaver studied Catra like an entomologist dealing with some interesting new form of cockroach, a process that went on entirely too long. Then the Commodore said, “Very well, Catra. Have the navigator lay in a course. Oh, and Catra…”

“Ma’am?”

“Make sure to bring me their leader’s head.”

Ribnoss was a nightmare of rust and grime, a flame-lit hellscape of furnaces, factories and foundries. Toxin rain pattered off the hull of the _Protector_ as it descended towards a city, the industrial spires connected by intricate webs of walkways and passages.

“This place is awful,” said Adora. She was looking out of one of the portholes as they came in over the ocean – a horrible, brown-green slurry. Heavy-looking sea ships moved ponderously across it, their gunmetal-grey hulls covered in hideous stains and patches of corrosion.

“It wasn’t always like this.”

Adora turned to look at Perfuma, and her question must have been obvious from her expression, because Perfuma continued, “A hundred years ago, Ribnoss was a paradise. In the royal gardens on Plumeria, we keep some populations of Ribnossian plants – too few species. But then…”

“The Horde.” Adora could see the outlines of the prefabricated buildings from here – the Horde-standard factories and cargo starports she’d seen all over the few civilised planets she’d ever visited.

Perfuma nodded. “I can’t even leave the ship here. Like Double Trouble.”

“I’m sorry-”

“You shouldn’t keep blaming yourself for what the Horde does, Adora. Ribnoss was like this before you were even born.”

Two figures made their way along the walkways, toxin rain dripping down their coats and the bronze-hued armour visible underneath them. One was very tall and bulky, its armour modified to permit two long tusks, while the other was much smaller, much slighter (although still the size of an average adult man), a glowing blue bar slashed horizontally across its face where many others would have eyes.

“Looks like another bad night,” said the smaller figure, a faint digital buzz overlaying his husky baritone voice.

“They’re all bad nights.” His partner’s voice was much higher and softer than people would doubtless predict from her size, although it, too, was distorted a little by the electronic filter of her armour. “It’s the price we pay for stopping them from getting worse.”

“Yeah, you _say_ that, Tusk-”

“Vizar, stop,” Tuskada told him. “You know that if the Horde thinks you’re disloyal there will be…consequences.”

The faces of friends of Vizar’s the Horde had thought disloyal flashed through his mind. For some reason, he didn’t see any of them around these days. He waved a four-fingered hand. “Okay, okay. It’s just been a rough week, that’s all. And the weather sucks.”

“Don’t I know it. I’m surprised we even have words for not-rain.”

Their helmet comms chimed in unison.

“No rest for the wicked, I guess,” muttered Vizar as he checked the dispatch. Some suspicious activity going on around some power junctions, and the culprits were nearby. If they moved quickly, they could apprehend the culprits before the Horde troops who were also definitely inbound applied their trademark “shoot first, only ask questions like ‘do you have any spare ammo’” approach.

Rigging the first two power junctions to blow had been easy. They had enough explosives to make it count, and local customs was pretty corrupt – a bit more bribe money, and Adora could probably have staged her own private ground war.

Then again, given that the Horde had descended on them while Glimmer was still setting the charges, that might end up happening anyway.

Adora cursed the loss of her pistol to Catra as she pulled the stun prod out of the bag. Regrettably, customs hadn’t _quite_ been corrupt enough for them to bring a carbine. She’d have to do what she could. There was plenty of cover, at least; apparently unobstructed paths weren’t a huge priority on Ribnoss. The area was a cat’s cradle of walkways going over and past each other, and there was no way she’d be able to keep track of all of them.

Moving with the greatest agility she could muster – she was pretty good, even if she wasn’t on par with Catra – she covered the ground between her and the nearest Horde squad, ducking behind walls and power conduits to avoid fire. Her heavy raincoat – they were for sale at the spaceport, and also nearly everywhere else – lashed out behind her like a cape. The first soldier went down to a brutal strike from the prod, and as the others spun around, she lashed out with it and struck another in the stomach. A third, she didn’t even bother with the club; she dropped into a low sweep, kicking his legs out from under him, and he landed with a splash in a puddle of contaminated water, his gun skittering over the edge of the walkway.

She ducked under a shot and snatched the gun from the hands of a fallen soldier. She fired a few blasts, grabbed another fallen weapon, and headed back to the junction, where Glimmer was sheltering behind an industrial-looking pipe. A blast ruptured the side as Adora approached, spraying vile-smelling liquid across the path.

“Thanks,” said Glimmer, plucking the offered gun – a large pistol, the exterior metal slightly corroded – from Adora’s hand.

Firing behind them, the two began their retreat.

“Give me some good news, Bow!” barked Glimmer into her comms.

“We’re back at the ship. We had to withdraw before we could rig all of them, but we got fairly close.” He sounded exhausted; his withdrawal had apparently been pretty energetic. “Neither of us got hit, but a few of those shots came close enough to char my binder. We’ll wait for you-”

“No, go on ahead,” Glimmer told him. “If you wait for us, the sky’s going to be full of Carnivores by the time we take off. We’ll hijack a shuttle or something, meet you in space.”

“I really hate that we keep having to say that,” said Bow. “Just once I’d like us to leave quietly.”

Adora cursed. Two new figures were approaching from the side – an average-sized man with a glowing blue visor and a hulking figure with a pair of very large tusks, clad in bronze-painted metal and wearing toxin-stained coats. The metal looked like a uniform, so Adora had to assume this was the local constabulary or something. (It was an impressive achievement if Ribnoss _had_ a local constabulary; often the Horde would just take over enforcement. Adora had originally been told it was in order to reduce corruption and increase order; now, she suspected it was simply to enforce control.) She fired a test shot to see what their armour could take; the larger of the two stepped in front of the other, and a forcefield flared to life around those tusks, absorbing the shot.

Adora ducked back as a shot came at her from an unexpected angle. She pointed across to another walkway. “More of them! They’re setting up a crossfire!”

The walkway ahead of them began to sag alarmingly as the criss-crossing aurora of weapons fire tore into its supports. Adora heard a scream, and realised that clinging to the edge was a civilian, apparently someone who hadn’t managed to get out before everything exploded. She started to move-

But Glimmer was already there.

As the civilian began to lose their grip, Glimmer raced forward so quickly that to Adora, it almost looked like she was flying. In a single fluid motion, she caught the cloaked figure by the wrist, staggering a little as she adjusted to the weight, and then pulled them up.

The ground around her erupted in weapon fire, and the walkway obviously shifted under her feet. She made a graceful leap off the collapsing walkway, clearly aiming for another-

A conduit blew right next to her, and she lost control. Adora could tell she wasn’t going to have time to regain it.

As Glimmer made a clumsy landing on the lower walkway, Adora leaped. It was going to sting, but she had a clear line of action and knew what she was doing. She landed on her feet, her knee complaining but still functional, and hurried to Glimmer’s side. The half-Lunavian was unconscious, so Adora carefully lifted her, making sure to keep her head steady the entire time, and started to run.

“Well,” said Vizar. “Don’t see that every day.”

“Looks like we’re gonna see a lot more of it.” Tuskada sounded gloomy. “Come on, let’s get down there. We might still be able to make a collar; it looked like one of them landed badly.”

Vizar shrugged and followed Tuskada. There was just enough walkway left for her to get past the damaged area, so they started to move as quickly as possible, making for the elevator. If they could get there fast enough, they could probably spare the saboteurs the tender mercies of the Horde, at least.  
“I’ll go left, you go right?” said Vizar as they began to descend.

“Gotcha.”

The _Fright Zone_ arrived in the Extein system already tooled up for war. Weapons blisters charged up, hangar doors opened, and it rose towards the ragtag pirate fleet like an avenging demon.

Catra’s squadron was at the forefront of the formation as the Horde fighters boiled out of the hangars. Their bulkier fighters were like beetles leading bees, and as orders came from the carrier, they started to sting.

“Fish in a barrel, right, One?” said Lonnie over the comms as they took apart the pirates’ hastily rallied skirmishing squadrons.

“Yeah, but the fisherman’s packing heat.” Wow, Catra didn’t even know how she put that sentence together, that was terrible. “Don’t get cocky, Two, that’s my job.”

“My power core’s acting up, One. I’m gonna double back to the carrier.”

“You do that, Three.” Kyle’s fighter veered out of formation, and Catra sighed; sometime she’d meet whoever thought Kyle had it in him to be a fighter pilot, hopefully while she was holding some kind of weapon. “Okay, Two; let’s get some kill markings.”

“You read my mind.”

“They’re coming up behind us,” added Polypus, from Lonnie’s rear turret. “Recommend opening up the formation so the Force Captain and I can get a clear shot.”

Catra felt a twinge of annoyance at that; she was supposed to be the Squadron Leader, not some random Salinean who’d only been there a short time. Still, it was a good idea. “Good thinking, Two. All units, spread out – we’ve got pursuers coming from behind, and only the Predators have rear guns. Open some lines of fire!”

The swarm broke apart, forming two large wings around the central knot of Catra’s squadron, and Scorpia and Polypus began to blaze away, the rear turrets carving a hole in the ambushing fighter wings.

“We have a positive identification on the cruiser there.” This wasn’t a fighter comm, from the sound of it; must have been an officer on the carrier. “That’s the pirate flagship – the _Leviathan_. _Fright Zone_ moving into broadside position; give us a clear shot!”

“Understood, _Fright Zone_ ,” said Catra. “All units break off! We’ll come at them from the stern, kill their engines.”

Blinding beams of energy burst from the Fright Zone. Catra wasn’t even looking that way, Horde fighters were designed to filter most of the capital-scale weapon discharges down to merely uncomfortable, and the volley of shots from the Fright Zone’s side-mounted cannons was still painful to the eye.

Lonnie seemed unusually satisfied as she reopened the squad channel, the pirate fighters suddenly gone. “Looks like that’s all of ‘em, One. Should we stay out here and provide fire support?”

“Negative. Bring us in to breach.”

“Y’know we’re not a breach team, One?”

“Shadow Weaver told me to bring her their leader’s head, Two, and that’s what I’m gonna do. We’re boarding that ship.”

There was a momentary pause before Lonnie said, “On your own head be it, One. I’m picking up a damaged bay door; could be a workable breach point.”

“Mark it on my HUD, Two.”

Moving with the speed of panic, Adora pulled Glimmer into the alleyway. Well, “alleyway”. It was mostly just a side corridor branching off from a larger junction going left, and it had a bunch of trash disposal stuff, but it was _basically_ an alleyway.

A skitlet – maybe a foot in length plus tail, furry back, scaly underbelly – looked at her and squeaked angrily before going back to scavenging in a dumpster. The little creature was a back-alley fighter, by the looks of it; its tiny face was covered in battle scars.

Adora gently lowered Glimmer to the ground. She couldn’t keep running, not without checking Glimmer’s injuries.

There was a clunk from above her, and Adora looked up into the cold blue gaze of a cybernetic visor, gazing out of a bronze helmet. She’d seen quite a few visors during their time here; something about the pollution here caused a lot of human children to be born with weakened and malformed eyes, and this was generally corrected with cybernetics. This was bad. The bronze armour looked like some sort of uniform -

Then the light in the observer’s face flickered in what Adora could only parse as a cybernetic wink, and the enforcer turned away. “There’s no-one here!” he said into what were presumably helmet comms, his voice a husky baritone. “Refocus on sector seven!”

It was several moments before Adora remembered to breathe.

She went back to trying to patch Glimmer up. Moving as quickly as she dared, she bandaged a scratch over Glimmer’s eyes, checked her arm and leg bones for anything amiss. Then, remembering the explosion, she checked Glimmer’s back-

Huh.

Despite the feathery layer and Glimmer’s body structure, she could just make out the lines of muscles – a very different arrangement to those Adora knew a human would have. And at what looked like the focal points for those muscle arrangements were two gnarled, painful-looking scars, each at least as large as a hand. 

The hole in the bay door was still glowing a violent red-gold as Catra hurled herself from the Predator’s cockpit and crash-tackled the first pirate. There was a wet thud, followed by a crackle, as Catra brought the stun prod down on her, before spinning on the spot to smash it into another pirate’s jaw.

As the Horde boarding shuttles – chunky machines, their bat-styled wings folding as they landed – poured in, Catra flashed a vicious grin at the rest of the squad. “Scorpia, New Guy, you’re with me; Lonnie, you look after the fighters.”

Lonnie eyed her sceptically and said, “Ain’t that the Force Captain’s call?”

“Uh…What do you think, First Captain?” said Catra, who had momentarily forgotten that yes, technically Scorpia was in charge here. In her defence Scorpia had an amazing lack of commanding presence for someone made entirely of muscle.

“Uh…that thing you said sounds great, let’s do that.” Scorpia looked embarrassed to even be doing her job.

“Great,” snarled Catra. “Now are we gonna go take out some pirates or what?”

Lonnie’s eyes drilled into Catra’s back until a turn in the corridor broke her line of sight.

The first thing that told Glimmer that she’d regained consciousness was that her head was hurting, a deep, throbbing note of discomfort. Soon, it was joined by her shoulder, her arm and her back in a symphony of pain.

“Oh, thank the stars, you’re awake.”

Glimmer opened her eyes. Eye. For some reason, only one of them seemed to be working. “Adora? Whuh?”

“You took a pretty bad landing, Glimmer.” Adora’s shirt was looking pretty torn up, while her raincoat was draped over the corner of a dumpster; muzzily, Glimmer realised that Adora must have made bandages from her own clothes. “I don’t think you’ve broken anything, but you’ve got a pretty nasty scratch over one eye – I’ve tried to patch it up, but I had to cover the eye to do it. This isn’t exactly a sickroom, but I’ve done my best, and at least it’s out of the rain. I can’t rule out a concussion, either; how’s your head?”

Glimmer made a face and said, “It hurts, but I can see fine and my ears aren’t ringing.” She smiled faintly. “I got my dad’s skull; Mom always said he was stubborn.”

“I noticed something while making sure you didn’t get any burns from that blast.” There was a heaviness to Adora’s voice that hadn’t been there before, and Glimmer held her breath, as if waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Glimmer…how did you get those scars?”

There was a long, awkward silence.

Then Glimmer said, “Have you ever seen a Lunavian – a full one?”

“No…”

“I’m not surprised. There aren’t many left.” She pulled herself to her feet, stumbling slightly. “They look a lot more like birds than I do; I definitely take after my dad. Part of that includes wings.”

“So what happened to yours?”

She studied the floor.

“Glimmer…”

She studied harder.

“Please, Glimmer. Just tell me.”

“All right.” She raised her eyes to Adora’s, head tilted back slightly to make up for the height difference, and Adora realised her exposed eye was brimming with tears. It felt like all of Glimmer’s armour had just…fallen away. “It was the Horde. They were trying to get me to talk, and…” Words failed her.

“Glimmer…” Adora swept forward, enfolding Glimmer in a hug. Tears soaked into her shoulder. “I’m so sorry. I’m an idiot. I shouldn’t have pushed you.” A thought occurred, and she tried to pull away, but Glimmer’s grip was too strong. “I was Horde. How can you still trust me after everything they’ve done to you?”

“Because you’re _not_ Horde.” She favoured Adora with a shaky smile. “You’re one of us.”

“I still shouldn’t have pushed you, Glimmer-”

“No, it’s okay, really. We probably had to have this conversation sometime anyway.” She looked up at Adora, tears drying on her left cheek, traces of her usual cockiness returning. “I assume the others already took off?”

“They’re hiding in the outer system, yeah.”

“Great. Let’s go steal some transport.” It was as if that hurt, wounded Glimmer was gone, vanished without trace, but somehow Adora knew she wasn’t going to stay gone. She just didn’t have time to focus on that now, and so she’d…pushed it down.

As they started moving, a pained grunt escaped Adora before she could manage to choke it back. Glimmer turned to look at her. “Stars, Adora, are you all right? I should have checked-”

“You got it a lot worse than I did, Glimmer. I just wrenched my knee, that’s all.”

Vizar lit up as Tuskada paced in front of him, the floor shaking a little with each impact of her feet. They were in the entrance to Vizar’s lodgings, which were on the upper end of accommodation for people who weren’t Horde officers – in that he got multiple rooms. 

“You _let them go?!_ ”

“That’s the fifth time you’ve said that, Tusk,” said Vizar, and breathed out a plume of red-tinted smoke.

“Because you didn’t give me a good explanation the first four times, Vizar! They blow the power grid, start a firefight-”

“Point of order, Tusk.” He began counting on his fingers. “One, they didn’t start shooting, the Horde did. Two, when the shooting did start, they were the ones trying to look after the civs. The Horde didn’t care.”

“You helped them because they pulled someone up from a falling walkway?”

“Aren’t _we_ supposed to be doing that kinda thing?”

Her eyes narrowed under her helmet. “You’re gonna get us both killed talking like that.”

“Then let’s do something to earn it.” He vented more smoke. “The Horde’s already killing us, Tusk. Every time we breathe, we die a little faster, because the Horde thought Ribnoss was a great place to put factories. Why the hell do you think I smoke? It’s not gonna do anything to my lungs that the air isn’t already doing.” He looked imploringly at her. “Do you really want to spend the maybe ten, fifteen years we have left like this? Hunting down people who save lives to help the people who are taking ours?”

Metal ground against metal as Tuskada’s enormous fist clenched. “You kill yourself however you want, Vizar. I’ll have no part in it.”

“Great.” He threw away the butt of his cigarette. “Don’t forget your coat.”

Catra blazed away down the corridor, her pistol in one hand, Adora’s in the other. After a few shots, the former started to protest, so she holstered it and stuck with just Adora’s. The fact that Shadow Weaver had issued Adora with a freshly manufactured pistol and her with a fifth-hand piece of junk had always rankled, just a bit.

To her left, Polypus seemed to have left all his nerves behind. He was fighting like a machine: find target, kill target, move on to next target.

They emerged from the cluttered corridor into a sort of guard chamber behind the bridge, and Catra’s jaw dropped. Leading the guard squad was an actual Lunavian – he had a hooked, armoured nose that pushed towards a beak, a thick layer of black and grey feathers, and not only did he have a set of black wings sprouting from his back, his arms were similarly shaped. He scowled at Catra, brandishing a crudely built mace (really just a length of pipe with a rounded weight on one end), and demanded, “The shit do you think you’re doing, Horde scum? This wasn’t part of the deal!”

Catra gave him an odd look and said, “What deal?”

Catra’s hand lashed out, toppling a pirate with a strike from a stun prod, and the Lunavian’s face became wary. He started backing away as his underlings moved in to surround Catra. “What do you mean, what deal? The deal!” He gestured to a hulking, red-eyed Karnoxian. “Slakk, remind her.”

Slakk joined some of his crewmates in a heap on the ground, and Catra pounced. She landed behind the Lunavian pirate, kicking one of his feet out from under him in a single fluid motion, then seizing him by the ruff of feathers around his neck and slamming his balding face into the bulkhead.

The Lunavian struggled until Catra powered up Adora’s pistol. That click-hum sounding in his ear suddenly made him _extremely_ polite.

“Now,” growled Catra, “who are you, and what ‘deal’ are we breaking?”

“I would’ve thought Governor Hektokur would have tipped you off. He hasn’t come to wipe us out because we’re useful. He pays us to come in and launch small raids. We get a little money. He gets a threat to keep the rubes in line. It’s a smart way of doing business…if I do say so myself.”

“You didn’t tell me who you were.”

“Oh! Uh. Name’s Vultak.” Up until now Catra had been unaware Lunavians could sweat. “Captain Krakana had me work out the terms with the Governor.”

Catra evaluated this. “Did they now.”

“She, not they.”

“Okay then. So your captain is behind this? Well, I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I think I can arrange for your little deal to keep going.” Catra smiled, or at least showed teeth. “Unfortunately, Shadow Weaver sent me to get something from your captain, and I’m not leaving without it.”

“You’re not gonna kill me, are you?”

“Oh, don’t worry, Vultak. I’m not your enemy.” Catra smiled beatifically. “I’m gonna arrange you a promotion. How would you like to be a captain?”

Adora gritted her teeth as they ducked behind a cargo container. Careful substitution of their coats had allowed them to pass as dockworkers, but her knee was still complaining, and if anything went wrong…

“I wish we had one of Entrapta’s drones with us,” she grumbled. “I don’t think either of us are going to have much fun hacking the computer system.”

“So don’t hack. Find something useful and just steal it.”

Adora had to admit that Glimmer had a point-

“Hey, you two!”

Glimmer spun and fired a shot, narrowly missing the Horde soldier. Moments later, the alarms began to blare.

Glimmer at least had the decency to look a bit embarrassed. “Okay, new plan. RUN!”

They ran, Adora stumbling occasionally but keeping her leg going through sheer willpower.

The entrance to the landing bay was relatively easy to hold, but they weren’t going to have much of a chance to run for the hypershuttle – a civilian design, its two wings curving forward like knives – unless the Horde suddenly ran out of troops. At least the vehicle’s hull and the crates they were using as cover were resisting the volley of fire; a small explosion from behind them told Adora that some of the technical equipment hadn’t been so lucky.

The hypershuttle was pretty much the perfect escape vehicle. It was the smallest vessel capable of navigating jumpspace, and tended to be best for short, easily mapped journeys – between two neighbouring systems, for example. If you wanted to go long-distance, you needed the supplies and space and navigation access of a larger ship, one that had room for a biobay instead of just a low-rent CO2 scrubber and could form new destinations on the fly instead of needing one programmed in. It had even been left open by someone perhaps a little too trusting of the docking staff.

There was a whirring sound as turrets began to unfold from the walls, and Adora’s blood ran cold. There was nowhere in the dock that wasn’t exposed from some direction. If they stayed where they were, the heavy defences would take them out (and cover wouldn’t help, those things were designed to crack hullmetal); if they moved, the Horde would be able to bring them down. And she could tell Glimmer had reached the same conclusion.

“Guess this is it,” said Adora, fighting to keep her voice level. If this was the end, then she could at least face it with some dignity. “I just want to say, it’s been an honour.”

“Same.” Glimmer didn’t even seem angry; just sad. “No regrets?”

“Only that I didn’t join you earlier.”

She flinched as the turrets made a click-hum sound, like her old pistol charging to fire but immeasurably louder. They started to fire…

The torrent of shots from the Horde started to slack off, and Adora opened her eyes to see that the turrets were all firing – but not at her or Glimmer. Instead, the guns were cutting thick gouges out of the docking bay floor and into the corridor.

A voice cut in on their comms channel – a husky baritone. “I’m not gonna have control over these guns for long, kids – get onto that shuttle and get outta here.” Gunfire sounded over the channel. “Come on, get a move on.”

At the ramp, Glimmer paused for a moment. Over the comms, she asked, “Why are you helping us?”

“I don’t see good things done much in these parts, kid. Thanks for reminding me what hope felt like. Now get going; the longer you wait, the more fighters they’ll scramble.”

Vizar cursed his luck as he bolted through the deserted streets, energy blasts turning the rain into puffs of poisonous steam as he dodged. Phase one, “save strangers,” had gone okay. Phase two, “get out scot-free,” apparently needed work.

He ducked behind a parked skimmer, then rose, firing his service pistol over its nose. There was a shower of sparks as he hit something important.

He ducked back behind the skimmer as return fire turned the air above him into a crackling green aurora. He scanned the area, looking for some way, _any_ way, to get out –

There was a crash from where the Horde troops were in cover, and the energy barrage slowed and stopped. He raised his head above the skimmer.

The sight of Tuskada hitting two Horde soldiers with a third Horde soldier was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. As a fourth and fifth spun and opened fire, rows of blue lights crackled to life along the side of her tusks, and a crackling barrier flashed to life, evaporating the toxin rain as she moved forward. Shots began pouring into it, and the barrier began to redden-

Two shots from Vizar took out one of the soldiers, and before the barrier failed, Tuskada reached the last remaining one and hit him so hard that Vizar winced in sympathy. He’d once seen Tuskada’s punch crack concrete.

He leaped over the skimmer and hurried to his friend’s side, checking for further enemies. “Thought you weren’t coming.”

“I mean, if I leave you to run a revolution by yourself, you’ll just screw it up,” she said, a teasing note in her voice. “Since it looks like we’re doing this, I might as well make sure it’s done right.”

“I knew you’d see my side, Tusk.”

“Did you?”  
“Well…” He gave an embarrassed chuckle. “I hoped you would, at least.”

She looked at him scornfully. “Come on, rebel boy. They’ll send more troops soon; we should be somewhere else.”

* * *

Catra’s head was high, and the sack over her shoulder was dripping magenta fluid, as she swaggered into the Commodore’s office. Sometime in the fight, the sleeve of her uniform had been torn off, revealing scars that she’d never quite told anyone about – mostly burns, with a few jagged forks of lightning under them – so that arm was awkwardly wrapped up in bandages hiding non-existent injuries.

“Here you are,” she said, presenting the sack. “One pirate leader head, as ordered, ma’am.”

“Excellent, Catra.” Shadow Weaver sounded less pleased by Catra’s achievement and more disgruntled that she had to compliment Catra. “I am curious to know why you released the pirates, however.”

“A misunderstanding, Commodore. I discovered that they’re helping keep Morlax loyal – the local governor pays them to launch useless raids he can use to stir up panic, keep the people under control. Since we can use that, I figured it should keep going, just…under new management.”

Shadow Weaver evaluated this. “Very well, child; you will face repercussions for this when its effects materialise, but I will accept your explanation for the decision. Come with me to the bridge, Catra. Let us proceed with our plans…”

* * *

The vibration of the hypershuttle’s engine felt like being kicked in the backside, and Adora could tell Glimmer was flinching as her back bounced off the seat repeatedly. Volleys of fire from the Carnivores behind them lit up space.

“Are you all right, Glimmer-”

“I can deal with pain! Just _fly!_ ”

Adora nodded. “Tighten your harness, it’ll help.” She kicked the engines up a notch, adding a fresh edge of spleen-kicking to the vibration, and pulled the control wheel into a corkscrew turn that put a satellite between her and the pursuers – for the few moments that the satellite survived the volley of fire, anyway.

“I’m gonna head for the ship, but I can’t go straight for it or they’ll tear us to shreds!”

Glimmer made a hissing noise. “You can keep us safe, right?”

Adora nodded, her eyes remaining locked on the void ahead of them. “We may get a little laser-burned, but these are old ships and the pilots aren’t very good. We should be okay-”

A shape dropped into view, and Adora’s heart sank. It looked like that new-model Horde fighter they’d stolen from Adora’s old squad on Terzos, and it was right in front of them, and they had no shields. If it opened fire, they were probably dead –

Two beams of white fire burst from either side of its nose, and as the two women in the shuttle flinched, a flash from behind them told Adora that it hadn’t been firing on her. Today was apparently a good day for that.

“Attention, Horde fighters!” The voice coming over the comms was masculine with a faint digital edge, and it sounded like it was having the time of its life. “Break off your pursuit right now or you _will_ be destroyed!”

…Huh.

The hypershuttle tore past the fighter as it began firing. A much brighter flash told her it had managed a hit, one of the dots faded, and the two remaining dots on the tac display veered off, clearly unwilling to tangle with the much newer model.

Then the fighter was in formation with them, easily keeping pace with the scorched hypershuttle. “Hi guys! Entrapta sent me. I’m your backup!”

“How did Entrapta find a – wait.” Glimmer’s eyes widened in shock, and she said, “You’re an AI?”

“PFC _Swift Wind_ , at your service!” The fighter executed a needlessly flamboyant roll. “Entrapta thought up the PFC. Short for _Protector_ Fighter Craft. Is Adora there?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” said Adora. “Nice to meet you, uh, _Swift Wind_.”

“Entrapta said I was gonna be your fighter from now on! So why are you flying around in that clunky old thing when you could be flying around in me?”

Adora gave Glimmer a helpless look. This could take some getting used to. “Uh…Entrapta must have gotten distracted, _Swift Wind_. She didn’t tell us you were coming.” _Or existed._ “We’ll go out for a flight soon, OK?”

“Great! Also, someone named Mermista wants me to tell you that you lost her twenty lunes by showing up in a hypershuttle and not a cargo ship.”

“Tell her we’re sorry but she didn’t bother to ask in advance,” said Glimmer drily.

The shuttle came to rest on an open area of the docking bay floor, and the bay doors slid closed behind the sleek shape of _Swift Wind_. As Adora and Glimmer stepped out, a little unsteadily, one of Entrapta’s drones rushed across the floor to meet them.

“Hey, Entrapta,” said Glimmer. “Thanks for sending _Swift Wind_ to help us.”

“Isn’t he a beauty?” said the drone. “I’ve made so many improvements to his design! Two-seater cockpit, human-level AI core, boosted guns and engines – it was just so great to work on him! Oh, uh, I kinda had to salvage some parts of your old fighter to make him, but, uh, it wasn’t really repairable anyway-”

“No, that’s okay.” Adora gestured to _Swift Wind_. “The old Carnivore was just a ship. He’s something unique.”

“Yes!” _Swift Wind_ shifted under his own power, flashing the winged horse design that had been painted on his nose, presumably by Entrapta. “C’mon, Adora! Take me out for a spin!

Adora looked at Glimmer, a tired but cocky smile dancing on her lips. “Think you could handle another flight?”

The fighter drifted in space, its engines idling. The _Protector_ ’s bulk was below them, sitting under their ship like some vast ocean-going creature, and the distant stars shone through the canopy.

“All right,” said _Swift Wind_. “I’m tuning back the gravity now, okay?”

After a few moments, Adora felt it. As the artificial gravity fell away, and the restraints loosened, just a bit, she began to float.

“It’s not flying,” said Glimmer from behind her. “But it’s pretty close. Thank you.”

 _Swift Wind_ coughed. “So you guys just like to…watch the stars? I mean, okay, I guess, but I kinda wanna do something more energetic. There’s a whole lot of manoeuvres in my databanks, and I wanna do all of them!”

“We’ve got a long way to go,” Glimmer told him; somehow, Adora could tell she was smiling faintly. “You’re going to have plenty of chances to show off what you can do. But Adora’s had a long day, okay? Just let her relax.”

“Okay.” It was the first time she’d ever heard a ship sound peevish. “You promise I’m going to get to do loop-the-loops and barrel rolls and so on?”

“If I know anything about Adora’s flying, you’re going to get to do moves nobody’s had to name before.”

“Hey!” protested Adora.

“I mean that in a good way, Adora!”

As she scanned the heavens, Adora felt a shiver run down her spine as she saw a patch of pure darkness. It felt…wrong, somehow. Like a splash of blood on an otherwise pristine sheet.

“Uh, Glimmer?” She pointed. “Do you know what that is?”

Glimmer sounded surprised as she said, “You’ve never – oh, right, this is probably the furthest to this side of Horde space you’ve ever been. It’d be hidden behind the Kowl Nebula or a stray constellation from half the places we’ve been so far.” She coughed. “That’s known as Despondos. There are a bunch of different legends about it depending where you go – on Brightmoon, we say it’s a scar left by an ancient superweapon, and that’s why we try and avoid war.”

“Since when have _you_ avoided war?”

“I didn’t say I believed it, Adora. I don’t think anyone’s built a weapon big enough to erase an entire sector.”

The comms buzzed, and Entrapta’s voice said, “I’ve plotted our next course. We can get to Morlax pretty quickly, and from there to Maragraf.”

Adora would have liked to spend more time out, but oh well. “All right. _Swift Wind_ , could you put the gravity back and tighten up the restraints, please? We need to get going.”

As the _Fright Zone_ returned to Morlax, one of the trackers rose from her seat and saluted. “We’ve got a lock on the drone, Commodore. They’re almost here.”

“Wonderful,” said Shadow Weaver. “We’ll lie in wait and ambush them. I want us running dark.”

“At once, ma’am.”

Catra stood at the side of the command deck, her fists twitching. So close. All she needed to do was wait…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The show is ended, but Starways lingers on. In fact, I have a lot of ideas for Starways, and while some things are going to be modified to take S5 into account (I definitely want to include the Star Siblings later, for example), I'm not going to be making huge changes where this fic's Horde diverges from Horde Prime's. Ultimately, this is my AU, and it doesn't have to be beholden to canon except where I deem it to be advantageous to a story about Be Space Gay Do Space Crimes.
> 
> Shout out to all the friends whose work I've recommended in past chapters, and fresh shout-outs to my friends [Rod](https://therodrigator6.tumblr.com/) (who mostly posts on tumblr) and [LadyLazuli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLazuli/pseuds/LadyLazuli) (I really need to read _Despara_ , hopefully I'll have time tomorrow). They recently collaborated on writing and translating a fic that ripped my heart out and beat me to death with it, so well done them.
> 
> Thanks for reading! If you've made it this far, that's two-thirds of season 1. (I have four seasons planned. Buckle up, kids.)


	10. Stranger than Friction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catra's squad is debriefed after a mission.

“Polypus was the first to notice the ruins.

“Our quarry had avoided major population centres and headed for the Morlaxian hinterlands, the better to avoid the scrutiny of the local guards – not realising that the _Fright Zone_ was hidden within the asteroid belt, lurking like a deep-sea predator awaiting the appearance of its foolhardy prey.

“The ruins themselves were akin to a cyclopean field of shattered glass, each fragment’s depths inscribed with the arcane fractals that haunt one’s vision on exposure to the mysterious realm of jumpspace. The central structure was obviously overgrown, the passage of centuries or millennia having cost the structure its intact status. It was beyond me to observe that sprawling maze of translucent spires, each older than memory, without feeling some slight tremor of fear – fear of whatever ancient, long-forgotten evils may haunt such accursed domains, and fear of what may come to pass in future aeons, where the Horde’s engines of war may be no better remembered. The universe is infinite, and it is without mercy.

“The Force Captain, chitin dulled by the wan light of the midmorning sun, ordered us to form up, delegating the precise manner of our disposition to our Squadron Leader. She studied the unfamiliar battlefield, eyes glinting in azure and citrine hues, and laid out the order of our advance: I was to take point, with my compatriot – and, I hope, my friend – Lonnie guarding our left flank, Polypus our right, and my bosom friend Rogelio serving as rearguard.

“Our weapons out, their weight a constant reminder of the significance of our objective, we advanced into the ruins under covering fire from detachments of local troops. However, the labyrinthine constraints of the ruins ensured that it was not long before we were on our own, cut off from all help, all support, and all hope. I sighted movement deeper within-”

* * *

“And what happened then?” asked the bored-looking Horde officer, who had been typing all of this into her console.

The soldier she was debriefing, a slightly built human with pale skin and hair on the fine line between dirty blonde and brown, shrugged. “Then I got hit with an arrow, got a large stun shock, and I don’t really remember anything after that.”

“So you’re…useless, then.”

“So I’m told,” said Kyle.

“Great.” The officer pressed a button on the console. “Send in another soldier to debrief; we’re not going to get anything of use out of this one.”

* * *

“Polypus was the first to notice the ruins.

“The moment he did I was like _yes, of course they’d be going there_. They’ve been going after those ruins for some reason – eventually I’m gonna figure out why. Scorpia put me in charge of the formation, so I put Kyle up front where his uselessness could be managed, Rogelio at the back to keep an eye out for ambushers, Lonnie out on the left flank, and Polypus on the right.

“Naturally, Kyle demonstrated his uselessness right away by getting hit with a stun arrow. Still, that was two factors down: we knew our enemies were ahead, and we knew we wouldn’t have to worry about Kyle doing something stupid and getting us killed. So we moved up into the ruins, keeping an eye out for trouble.

“Using the ruins as cover, I was able to get up close to the enemy, where I tried to go after their archer. They’d apparently anticipated that, though; as soon as I made my move, I was blindsided by their heavy hitter – the traitor, Adora. She tried to spin me some bullshit story about how I should defect and join her, but for all my faults, I’m a loyal servant of the Horde and there was no way I was going to be suckered.

“I focused on Adora; I know her fighting style the best, and the Commodore has told me in confidence that she’s a priority target. Scorpia and Lonnie went after her backup – a Salinean and a Plumerian. They were outnumbered, but Rogelio and Polypus should have been on their way, so I was confident in their success. Apparently I shouldn’t have been.

“I gave chase as Adora headed into the ruins. She’s never been as fast as me either, so I didn’t give her a chance to get away. She gave up on running when we reached a bridge, and tried to make a fight of it. She didn’t have the guts to try too hard, though. Kept trying to undermine my resolve, not that it worked.

“I had her on the back foot when the ruins began collapsing. I could probably have taken her and still had time to get out, but I knew I’d be needed outside, and I didn’t think she’d find a way out, so I withdrew.

“When I got out to the main entrance, naturally, everything was on fire. The Force Captain was doing okay, I guess, but I had no idea where Polypus was, Lonnie was having a really hard time with some Salinean, and Rogelio was running about in a panic. I took charge of my squad and got them back together so the Force Captain could do her thing, but by that point the rebels had withdrawn.

“And then Polypus called us back. Said he’d managed to find something useful – something the rebels would have trouble going on without.”

* * *

“Thank you, Squadron Leader.” The Horde officer – technically Catra’s rank, maybe a little higher – gave her an appraising nod, her short red hair trailing a moment behind her head. “You may consider yourself debriefed; please send in the next soldier.”

“You sure you don’t want more detail on how Adora fights? It might come in handy-”

“ _Please send in the next soldier_ , Squadron Leader.”

“Okay, fine, your loss.” Catra rose and headed for the exit of the small room. “Hey, Lonnie! They want to ask you about the mission!”

* * *

“Polypus was the first to notice the ruins.

“I’ve always thought those kinda ruins were creepy. Like, they built these giant glass things and never bothered to put anything to tell you what they were for? And the rebels seem to like hanging around in them, so it’s not like they’re safe. Wish they’d just wipe ‘em off the face of the planet.

“Anyway. As we made our way into the ruins, Kyle got hit, and Catra ditched him to go off and play the hero; funny how she always used to say it was Adora who did that. Adora jumped her while she obviously wasn’t paying attention, and while I couldn’t actually hear what they were saying, I’m pretty sure she was askin’ Catra to defect, since I could tell she was considering what Adora said. Guess the offer wasn’t good enough, though, ‘cause she took a swing at Adora, and they kinda ran off for what I’m gonna assume was a fight.

“I was heading back to look after Kyle when one of the rebels jumped me – Salinean girl, wearing teal. I could tell the Force Captain was having a bit of a hard time with some kinda plant thing, but I needed to focus on one enemy at a time, so I concentrated on the Salinean. It was tough keeping her at bay, but I was managing it, for the most part. Whatever the hell Rogelio and Polypus were up to, I hope it was worth it; it was just Scorpia and me against these elite rebel commandos under a constant hail of arrows. Intel probably dropped the ball; there’s no way they were pulling off all of that with the small group we were told to expect, so they must’ve had a bigger team. Or I guess they could’ve found some seditious groups on the planet, dunno where though.

“Just as we were getting everything kinda organised – Rogelio had figured out where Kyle had landed, Scorpia had cut her way through the plants, and I was driving off the Salinean – Catra turned up, looking a lot like she’d come off second best in whatever it was she and Adora were doing. Naturally, ‘cause it’s Catra, she started trying to act like she’d done us some great service by luring away one enemy rather than helping in the main fight. Ah well. You gotta expect crap like that, right?

“We regrouped to look after Polypus, who’d managed to capture something important by actually doing his damn job and watching the flank. I could see the rebels and traitors retreating; it looked like Adora was having to be towed back to their ship by two other people. Musta been a big deal to her.”

* * *

The Horde officer nodded and checked Lonnie’s name off the list. Next up was Polypus…Huh.

As she selected Polypus on the screen, an error message flashed up – one of the specific kind that Horde computer programmers, hellbent on making your life worse, put hard work into making as uninformative as possible. Probably someone messed up while coding the system so that Polypus was accidentally flagged, or his name was misspelled, or he had been selected for some other task. Maybe, since he’d kind of made a name for himself today, he was in some kind of advanced screening thing, and by this time next month he’d be her superior officer; promotions in the Horde tended to be a little arbitrary.

Whatever it was, it was someone else’s problem. She stabbed a tanned finger at the button to send Rogelio in, and was relieved when at least _that_ worked.

* * *

“Polypus fue el primero en notar las ruinas.”

“No sé si confío en Polypus. Llegó en el mismo transporte que la Capitana de la Fuerza, pero ella no lo conocía, y es alguien muy extraño. Es como si siempre nos estuviera observando- especialmente a Kyle. Y claro, pareciera muy nervioso y asustadizo, pero, acercalo a una pelea de verdad y es como si se transformara en una persona completamente diferente, un oponente calculador y frío. Al final, siempre y cuando esté de nuestro lado, puedo perdonar su actitud sospechosa.”

“Mientras nos esparcíamos, acercándonos a las ruinas, mi querido amigo Kyle fue impactado por una flecha que lo dejó inconsciente, y antes de que pudiese ayudarle, percibí enemigos acercándose. Los rebeldes nos estaban esperando, se habían puesto en una posición perfecta para lanzar una emboscada.”

“Catra, aparentemente presintiendo la oportunidad de perderse de vista de la Capitana de la Fuerza, se adelantó para lidiar con la batería de artillería rebelde. Pude ver a Adora enfrentarse a ella, cosa que debió de perturbar mucho a Catra, antes de que una maraña de vainas cayera sobre la Capitana; me moví entonces a asistirla. Podía ver como Lonnie peleaba con una Salinea armada con un tridente; le estaba yendo bien, pero era obvio que no podría contra ella. Le indiqué que se retirara, para que pudiésemos formar un frente, pero creo que no logró escucharme, así que Scorpia y yo nos ocupamos de la vegetación mientras luchaba con la Salinea ella sola.”

“Ampliamente, logramos hacer que las plantas retrocedieran. Encontré a Kyle tirado como un bulto cerca del frente del campo de batalla- el enemigo nunca lo atacó, gracias a las estrellas- Y luego Polypus nos dijo que había encontrado algo importante.”

* * *

Scorpia, Force Captain uniform impeccable, sat down heavily in the chair. There was a cracking sound, and she started to blush.

“Oh. Uh. I hope that wasn’t anything important?”

“Nothing significant, Force Captain,” said the red-headed officer, in the tone of a retail worker who has one last customer to deal with before quitting time. “Could you deliver your report, please?”

“Oh. Okay. Sure. So…”

“Polypus was the first to notice the ruins.

“I mean, gosh, he’s such a useful guy. I didn’t really meet him before we were assigned to this squadron, but so far he’s been really helpful. Bit of a bundle of nerves, though. I remember one time Catra put something in his bunk as a prank, must’ve been trying to show him that not every surprise is something bad – get him to laugh at stuff instead of being nervous, you know?

“Oh, right. Anyway, we were heading into the ruins when Kyle got hit. Just kinda went BZZT and fell over, looked like it stung. Catra looked back at me, eyes almost glowing in the soft light of Morlax’s sun, and told me she was going to go on ahead and deal with the archer – it was just, you know, so dashing and heroic.

“As she headed off for her target, a Salinean appeared on the flank, and Lonnie moved to deal with her. I tried to join in, you know, give her some support, but a giant thing of vines burst out of the ground and started trying to wrap me up, and it was kind of hard to tell what was going on while I was fighting it. I thought I saw a couple of eyes in the darkness inside the forest, and it was like they were watching me? You’d think it would’ve been scary, but actually it was kind of okay? I’m not sure why. Must’ve been knowing my team was at my back – can’t be too afraid when you’re with your friends!

“When Rogelio joined in the fight against the plant growth, it was easy to deal with. Just goes to show that teamwork makes the dream work, right?

When Catra came out of the ruins, looking battered, her tousled hair flowing behind her, Polypus called us over. Said that he’d managed to do something really important, didn’t I tell you he was a useful guy?”

* * *

Shadow Weaver closed the recordings and rose from her chair. The paraphernalia of her arts – crystals, parchments, strange and obscure reagents – had been watching over her shoulders as she’d observed the clumsy attempts of Catra’s squad to cover themselves with glory at each other’s expense. Honestly, the only thing worse than the disunity was the lack of _craft_. It was like watching children at play, thinking they were master schemers.

She moved to the corner of the room, where a containment cell had been set up. “We shall have to hope that your friends are more loyal to each other than Catra’s band of buffoons, won’t we, child? While your capture is certainly useful to me, your true value will be as bait. It will doubtless be amusing to see how they plan to make their way in.”

Her prisoner didn’t answer. Steps had been taken to ensure she didn’t pose any problems while the _Fright Zone_ was in transit. When they reached BST-ILN, the prison’s systems would keep her contained.

But for now, Princess Glimmer of Brightmoon, captain of the stolen prison ship _Constrictor_ , was being kept under sedation.

Shadow Weaver turned and headed for the command deck. If they broadcast this widely enough, surely even Adora’s pack of misfits would realise where their leader was…

* * *

Meanwhile, on the _Protector_ , Mermista bluntly shoved a tray of food through a slot in one of the cell doors.

“Hey, uh, kid. We’re gonna let you go when we, like, get the chance?” That hadn’t been her call, but the vote had gone against her. “But we kinda need to keep you in there for now.” The kid looked so pathetic that she actually felt bad for him. That was a new one. “Do you want, like, a book or a holoserial or something to pass the time? Could get boring being alone in there for a while.”

Their prisoner thought for a moment and said, “Could I get some art materials?”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Stars damn her soft streak. “So what’s your name, kid?”

Their prisoner looked up at her. He was a slightly built human with pale skin and hair on the fine line between dirty blonde and brown.

“Kyle.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short one, but 1) that lets me get it posted faster, and 2) there is only so far you can stretch this joke in text. Next up, we move into the three-part season finale with the Nor Iron Bars a Cage trilogy, followed by a short technical manual (which will also include a translation of Rogelio's report.)
> 
> With special thanks to my friend [Rod](https://therodrigator6.tumblr.com/) for first suggesting that Rogelio's report should be delivered in Spanish, then translating it. He does cool art, too.


	11. Nor Iron Bars a Cage, Part One: Gloom Robbing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adora journeys into the First One ruins on Maragraf in the hope that an artefact inside will help her rescue Glimmer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has an eeeeensy trigger warning on it because it contains scenes of child abuse and post-traumatic stress, although if you could handle its portrayal in the show, you can probably handle these.

The _Protector_ was limping as it entered the Maragraf system, its hull criss-crossed with new scars. One of its engines sparked and flickered, the trail of venting gas uncannily reminiscent of a plume of purple smoke.

“Well, we’re here,” said Entrapta. “I’m picking up one planet; we’ll set down there so Emily and I can get started on fixing the ship. I’m also picking up a First One ruin there.”

Bow checked the sensors. “I’m not seeing any pursuers, at least. Guess they didn’t want to take the risk.”

“Shifting power to the shields for reentry; we’re gonna need it.” She paused for a moment. “Shh, it’s okay, Emily. We’re gonna set down, and we’ll have a look at that engine, okay? I know you’re hurting, and I’m sorry. We’ll get you patched up soon, and it’ll all be right as rain.”

“She’s not the only one who’s having a rough time of it.” Bow rose from the console. His white crop top was stained with streaks of black oil and blue-green coolant, the legacy of a lot of hard work fixing the systems during the retreat from Morlax. “I’m gonna go get some sleep. I’m not going to be much use in the repairs if I pass out.”

“When you wake up, could you ask Adora if I could have some more DNA samples? I’m getting some weird readings off the first one, and I _really_ wanna see how weird.”

“Uh…I don’t think it’s the right time for that,” managed Bow. “I’ll ask if I get the chance, okay?”

* * *

The makeshift training dummy rocked backwards under Adora’s assault.

After helping with the emergency repairs, Bow had encouraged her to get some sleep. She hadn’t been able to, and her exercise equipment – mostly assembled from spare parts – was paying the price. She’d assumed four dummies would be enough; two of them were in pieces, and the third probably wasn’t far off.

_Adora._

A brutal kick to its face prompted the training dummy to sway severely to one side, then topple over like a felled tree.

_Adora!_

Reality flooded back in – or at least, part of it. Her knuckles were aching, fatigue hung on her bones like chains, and she was dripping with sweat.

The ghostly figure of Light Hope flickered to life over the fallen training dummy, interlocking code shifting on her chest.

_At last you have reached Maragraf, Adora. You have made excellent progress-_

“Yeah, I’ve kind of got something more important to worry about,” grunted Adora, wiping a bit of spare fabric across her forehead. “I’m just here until the ship’s repaired and we can go and rescue Glimmer.”

_Is it truly critical to your mission?_

“Wh – yes! Yes, it’s critical!”

_Why?_

Adora’s mouth moved. Finally, she managed, “You wouldn’t understand.”

 _I am not sure if you understand._ The impassive face studied her. _Question: who is Glimmer?_

“Wh – this ship’s captain! Half-Lunavian, really pretty, never backs down!”

Light Hope considered this. _Accepted. Retrieving Captain Glimmer acknowledged as important to the overall mission._

“If she isn’t – oh. Uh. Thank you?”

 _This vessel has sustained significant damage. It may take some time to repair._ Light Hope didn’t turn, exactly; it was more like she rotated on the spot to face the window. _The artefact you are required to retrieve here has considerable utility. It may be useful in your retrieval efforts._

“What is it?”

_File corruption error. I cannot provide that information._

“All right. Can you at least help me find it?”

_I will be able to provide assistance, yes._

“All right.” She visibly sagged as her energy ran out. “When we make planetfall, I’ll head for the ruins. Entrapta’s probably going to land near there anyway.”

 _I am…grateful that you have seen the importance of this._ _Thank you. Oh, and Adora…_

“Yes?”

_You should recharge. Your task will require a lot of energy._

Light Hope vanished.

* * *

Moments before Bow could knock, the door to Adora’s cabin slid open.

She looked wrecked. Her braid was ragged, there were bags under her eyes, and she was notably listing to one side. As she steadied herself on the wall, Bow realised her knuckles were raw.

He darted forward as she staggered, catching her and pulling her to her feet. “Adora! Are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” she told him, a lie so obvious that Bow didn’t even need to check for any of her tells. “Just couldn’t get much sleep.”

“You should really go back and try again. You look beat.”

“I can’t. There’s something in the ruins I need to get. Light Hope says it’ll help us save Glimmer.” Her eyes were pleading. “I need to get it.”

“Are you sure? We’re probably going to be here for a few days; we took a real beating.” That was the wrong thing to say; she flinched, and he shifted gears. “It’s not your fault; if you hadn’t been flying, we probably wouldn’t have made it out at all. But my point is that you don’t have to go rushing in without sleep.”

“I’m going, Bow. If it can help us…I need to get it.”

“Adora…” Bow knew the look in her eyes. “You’re going to do this no matter what, right?” He didn’t need an answer. “Can I at least come along? I don’t want you to get hurt – and I know Glimmer wouldn’t either.”

“…Okay.” A weary smile made its way onto her face. “And I assume one of Entrapta’s drones is going to come with us.”

“Probably.” Bow patted her gently on the arm. “I’ll get my quiver and some exo suits and we’ll make a start.”

* * *

Slate-grey sand crunched under Adora’s feet, wrapped in the bulky boots of the Horde-issue environment suit as they were, as the small group approached the ruins. Entrapta’s drone was sitting on Adora’s shoulder, like something out of a pirate holoserial.

The First One complex was a sprawling structure, dotted with the stumps of towers, jutting up like broken bottles towards a dead-looking red sun. While Adora had half-expected it to be sandblasted and worn, the glass inscribed with scars from the desert, it was almost entirely unscathed; apparently the windless day they had arrived on wasn’t unusual here.

Bow let out a low whistle. “I don’t know what happened here, but it must have been really bad. I’m picking up some biomatter traces, but they’re old. Like, a thousand years old.”

The door had apparently been torn free, and death-grey sand had spread within the entrance as Adora passed into the structure. She squinted at it as she walked past; it looked like some great force had slammed into the centre and punched it into the ruin. The crater in the door was slightly melted, surrounded by a filigree of cracks, and it gave her chills; it seemed almost…familiar, somehow.

Light flared ahead of her, and she raised a hand to cover her eyes instinctively – a waste of time, as the visor on the Horde environment suit darkened in response. As her eyes and the visor adjusted, she saw a ghostly, near-featureless figure, surrounded by a white glow that just made it harder to see the few details it had. She could make out a cape, and some sort of…could it be a sword? A long, straight-sided glowing shape held in one hand – that had to be a sword, right?

The figure flickered and dissolved.

“Okay,” said Adora, and stepped into the space where the ghost had been. “Weird, but…I don’t think it’s dangerous. It felt…lost, somehow.”

“That’s a pity,” said Entrapta, and Adora gave the drone on her shoulder an odd look. Their navigator coughed. “I mean, if it had been hostile, just think what we could’ve learned from the fight.”

“I’d prefer not to learn how quickly it can kill us, thanks,” said Bow.

Adora turned to look around the room. It felt less like the past First One ruins they’d visited, which struck her as places devoted to technology, and more like…a church? Something religious, anyway. Her suit lights played over the ceiling, picking out knots of circuitry in the ancient crystal. “Light Hope? Where to?”

_I am detecting a signal to the left._

“Thank you.” On the left side of the room was another door, which seemed to have been destroyed in the same way as the first. She gestured towards it. “Looks like someone blasted their way through.”

* * *

Glimmer’s eyes fluttered open, and the world greeted her with a deep darkness broken only by a dim blue glow. Her head hurt, and her mouth felt like something deeply unpleasant had crawled inside it and died.

“Blugh,” she said eloquently, forcing herself upright. She remembered fighting a Salinean – green skin, and glossy black eyes – and he’d just taken her apart. It was like fighting a machine. She’d need to be careful next time-

As the world put itself back together, she realised there was a figure in the room with her: tall, with a build that spoke of natural bulk but too little food, and huddled in the corner, as if _he_ was afraid of _her_ – even though he was much larger than her.

She cleared her throat, the horrible taste in her mouth starting to subside. “Uh, hello?” Yeah, that was how to make contact. “Hello?”

“No. Don’t talk.”

“Come on, I’m not going to hurt you. What’s your name?”

“Don’t know.”

Well, that was unexpected. “Are you okay? Did the Horde…”

The figure lifted its head, and Glimmer’s breath faltered. Her cellmate – because there was no way this was anything other than a cell – was wearing a crude metal mask, which glinted in the faint blue light. The mask looked like it was made from the same material as the cell wall; dark eyes stared out at her through two uneven holes, slightly occluded by a fog that made her wonder about cataracts.

In the half-light, she could just make out a ragged salt-and-pepper beard dangled from a chin hidden behind the mask, and a mane of similar hair hung, lank and lifeless, draped over her cellmate’s shoulders.

“Can’t remember. What I know, she knows. She can’t know. She can’t.” A broken, mad giggle shook his frame for a few moments before he added, “So I forget. If I don’t know it, she can’t!”

A sudden, wrenching pity seized Glimmer’s heart. “You don’t remember anything?”

“Dinner’s soon. It’ll taste bad.”

* * *

Instead of the shimmering white outline of the ghost they had already seen, this room greeted them with another spectre – a tall shape in a dull red colour that put Bow in mind of, somehow, both dried blood and spilled wine. Two faint lights in its face gave the impression of eyes. It was bulky, but it looked like the same bulk as a Horde environment suit – and there was enough detail in the image, unlike the brighter ghost, that he could make out hints of tubing and what could well have been protective plates.

It turned away, dissolving into fading motes of burgundy light, and Bow suppressed a shiver. He’d never believed any of the ghost stories his dads had told him when tradition demanded it, on the Night of Nine Shadows back in Brightmoon, but even knowing, intellectually, that these were probably just low-quality holograms, this was beginning to give him the willies. (He dismissed the joke about his transition that popped into his mind at that thought; it absolutely wasn’t a good time to make that pun).

Adora’s breathing was coming in heavily over the channel, so Bow turned to her. “Adora? Are you okay?”

“Never…better…” she managed. Bow’s eyes narrowed. Through the visor, he could make out flecks of sweat on her brow, and her eyes were wild. He began rifling through his memory for how to deal with a panic attack-

The floor started to glow, the circuits flaring to life under the ancient crystal. Shapes began to form around them: Bow could recognise one as a young Adora, another as Catra (it was interesting to think that Catra was the first real enemy he’d ever known by her first name). A third was probably their prisoner, and the other two were familiar from the battle on Morlax. He couldn’t see the scorpioni or the Salinean anywhere, but then, most Horde squads only had five people; presumably those two were later additions. None of them were old enough that Bow would consider them teenagers; these were children.

As their voices started fading in– Bow couldn’t tell if the sound was being carried by the thin, unbreathable air, or playing directly in his mind – he realised they were in the middle of an argument.

“Nice goin’, guys,” said one of them sarcastically. The speaker was a girl with dreadlocks, her skin tone somewhere between Bow’s and Adora’s. “We coulda won that one, too, but Kyle had to go and be useless and Catra couldn’t follow orders.”

“ _I_ couldn’t follow orders?” snapped Catra. “Who said you got to even _give_ orders? I was just trying to deal with the obstacle course, I didn’t need you riding my ass about it!”

“Stop it!” the young Adora told them. “Fighting isn’t going to get us anywhere.”

“Yeah, yeah, we all know you’ll be okay.” Catra’s face contorted into a sneer. “You’re Shadow Weaver’s favourite. I just _bet_ you’ll get back on normal rations days before the rest of us.”

A new figure, tall and tinted red, loomed into view. For a second, Bow wondered if the red ghost that had just disappeared was back, but this image wasn’t wearing a bulky spacesuit – it was wearing robes that seemed impractical on a spaceship, but apparently the Horde had some pretty lenient rules for officer uniforms.

“Now, now, children,” said the new figure, its voice like poison dripping from a vial. “You all knew the consequences of failure.” It began pointing at members of the group. “Catra, your aim was inexcusably sloppy. Kyle, you were a burden to the squad. And Adora…” The figure bent down and laid a hand on Adora’s cheek. “You knew that it was your responsibility to keep them in order. If you had succeeded in your role, even Catra and Kyle’s failures would not have cost you the exercise.”

“But if it’s my fault, why are they being punished?” demanded the young Adora. “If it’s my mistake, I should be the one paying for it.”

“Consider it a lesson, Adora.” The figure’s eyes pulsed with a stark white light. “When you’re an officer, your decisions will affect more than just you. _When you fail, others will pay the price_.”

The images froze, hanging in midair for a few moments, and then died. Motes of multicoloured light rained down around Bow and Adora like a meteor shower, dissipating as they struck the crystal.

Adora’s breathing was very loud in the sudden silence, and Bow could have kicked himself. His friend was having a panic attack, and the sudden hologram had made it worse. “Okay. Okay, Adora. Just focus on me. Take a few deep breaths.” Inspiration struck. “Just…count down, okay? Count with me. Ten. Nine.” Reaching zero didn’t have much effect. “All right. Back to ten. Still counting with me…Ten. Nine.”

After what felt like a very long time, Adora’s breathing slowed, and she seemed to relax a little bit, although if Bow was any judge her muscles were still as taut as guitar strings.

“Come on,” Bow told her. “Let’s get back to the ship-”

“No.” Adora locked her eyes on the wreckage of the other door. “I’m not letting bad memories stop me, not when Glimmer’s in trouble. Let’s keep going.”

* * *

“So who were they?” asked Bow as they continued into a narrow corridor, the door once again blown open by some great force. “If that’s too troublesome, I’m sorry-”

“No, don’t be.” Adora breathed out heavily. “That was my old squad – Catra, Lonnie, Kyle and Rogelio.” Even through the bulky suit, Bow could tell she was steadying herself. “And Shadow Weaver.”

“Your squad answered directly to a commodore as children?”

“We were kind of her pet project. She took special interest in us…especially in me. It was like she was trying to teach me specifically for some reason.”

“So…kind of like a mom?”

“Kind of like a commanding officer…and kind of like a mom.”

“Not a great mom, by the looks of it,” Bow said grimly. “Children shouldn’t be treated like that.”

* * *

Glimmer’s headache was beginning to ebb when dinner arrived.

A hatch opened in the wall and output a tray holding the glop that they made ration bars out of, minus the additions that had made mealtimes on the _Protector_ bearable. There was just slightly more than enough for one person.

Her cellmate gestured towards it. “You eat first.”

“No.” Glimmer’s stomach complained, but she forced it down. “I’ve been eating okay for a while; you’ve been starving in here. You need to keep your strength up, or you’ll never get out of here.”

“Not getting out of here. Been here too long.” He made another, more emphatic gesture. “You need strength. Eat.”

“We,” said Glimmer, putting as much steel into her voice as she could manage, “are going to split this evenly. There’s got to be a way out of here, and we’re going to find it.”

He looked at her for a long time before he nodded. “Evenly.”

He was right. It tasted bad.

* * *

Adora grabbed Bow by the forearm as the red ghost loomed in front of them again.

It didn’t react to them, of course. Instead, it walked forward through the doorway, stepping over the fallen door as it disappeared into the eternal night.

Adora’s grip tightened, and the circuits in the floor started glowing again. Bow couldn’t help but feel that he was being dragged into invading Adora’s privacy somehow, and the fact that she hadn’t complained, or even mentioned it, somehow made it worse.

The form of Shadow Weaver materialised before them again, holding what looked, to Bow, like an absurdly large hypodermic needle. Young Adora joined the group, fading into being right in front of them.

“But why do I have to get this?” said the Adora hologram. “Catra doesn’t. Lonnie doesn’t. Why me?”

“You have such great deeds ahead of you, child, but you must prepare for them. This is part of that.” Shadow Weaver reached out to her young ward. “Come on, now.”

“But it hurts!”

“All needles hurt, Adora-”

“Not like these ones! They’re like bug bites all over my body!”

“You must be willing to endure to do what you need, Adora,” oozed Shadow Weaver. “Think of this as just another test…”

Bow could have kicked himself as two and two _finally_ resolved into a four. “The red ghost…it reminds you of Shadow Weaver, doesn’t it? That’s why these memories are coming back.”

Adora nodded, her breathing extremely loud over the channel.

“Let’s go back to the ship! You shouldn’t have to go through hell for this.”

“No!” Bow jolted backwards, surprised by the vehemence of Adora’s response. “I can’t fail. I _won’t_ fail. These are just memories. I _won’t_ let them stop me.”

Bow suppressed a sigh. “Adora, I can _tell_ they’re hurting you. That’s not ‘just memories’, that’s post-traumatic stress. Ramming yourself into this again and again isn’t going to help!”

“I can deal with pain, Bow. Horde training is good for that much, at least.” Adora pointed at the open doorway ahead of them. “Light Hope says we’re nearly at whatever we need to collect. I’m not going to give up now.”

“I’ve got some choice words for Light Hope if we ever meet face-to-face,” grumbled Bow. “She should have at least warned you that this could happen.”

As they moved through the room, the thought occurred that the red ghost had stepped _over_ the fallen door, not through it – so, when it had been recorded, the door had already been destroyed.

* * *

They stepped through yet another demolished door to find bodies.

Not human bodies, or even organic bodies. These were machines – bulky, dark-plated robots that put Bow in mind of enormous insects, bulbous eyes dull in their faces. More than that, these were broken – the melted, cracked craters in their bodies almost certainly the work of the same force that had torn the doors off across the ruins.

Entrapta’s drone was almost dancing as it moved from robot to robot, and Entrapta’s voice was less a string of words and more like a rising, gleeful giggle. It moved past a hole in the floor, making for one particularly intact-looking specimen.

Light sparked in the robot’s dull eyes, and it lashed out. Metal rang against ancient, incomprehensible metal, and Entrapta’s drone skidded backwards and plummeted into the crevice.

“ENTRAPTA!”

Adora dived for the drone, straining to catch it as it disappeared into the pit-

And then, as she remembered certain details about Entrapta, she felt really, really silly.

“I know,” said Bow. “It’s really easy to forget that she’s back on the ship sometimes, isn’t it?” He reached up and fiddled with his comm settings. “I’m sorry we lost the drone, Entrapta. We’ll send as much footage as we can, okay?”

“I know you guys tried your best,” said Entrapta over the comms. Without the drone’s onboard equipment, there was an edge of static to her words. “She’ll be missed.”

Adora opted not to say anything. She turned to face the robot, but it had already collapsed, its broken form apparently worn out by that last effort.

* * *

The lights came on, and Glimmer winced as the world dissolved into a huge, bright blur. She could tell her cellmate had curled up, sheltering his face, but she couldn’t make out much else that was going on.

“So,” came a voice from outside, on the other side of the force barrier that had been illuminating the cell, “ _this_ is the dreaded Scourge of the Starways? Gotta say, I’m not impressed.”

Glimmer’s vision had recovered enough for her to make out the speaker: about Glimmer’s height, with very short brown fur and mismatched blue and gold eyes.

Summoning up all her natural intransigence, Glimmer plastered a cocky smirk onto her face. “Oh, hey. You’re Adora’s old friend, right? Catarrh?”

“Guess they don’t teach princesses manners in Brightmoon,” Catra shot back, theatrically cleaning her nails on her uniform.

“I mean, they teach us a few things you missed out on. Morals, for example. Compassion. Personal hygiene.” Glimmer forced her features into a wicked grin. “And how to maintain a guest room. The accommodations here are frankly shocking.”

Catra actually chuckled at that. There was still an edge of mirth in her voice as she said, “Nicely done, Sparkles. You’ve got guts. Too bad for you this is BST-ILN. People with guts here tend to lose them…one way or another.” She ran a claw along some bare metal, as if to underscore this. “Eventually Shadow Weaver is going to deal with you, and we’ll see how cocky you are after that.”

“I don’t give up easily,” Glimmer told her, smiling sweetly.

“I wish I could stay here until I got to watch her work you over, Sparkles, but duty calls. You know duty, right?” Catra showed off her most vicious grin. “I’ve gotta go prepare for when your idiot friends show up. Traps to set, deaths to plan, you know how it is. Have fun!”

She sauntered off, her squad following her.

Just before the lights went out, plunging Glimmer and her cellmate back into the blue-tinted night, one of the soldiers – a short, slightly built human with hair on the edge between dirty blonde and light brown – flashed her a nictitating wink, chartreuse glinting in his eye.

* * *

Light flared as the bright ghost appeared, stepping through the last door. This time, Bow could make out more details – the overwhelming white light was mostly coming from its garments, and he could make out a tanned skin tone on its arms and legs. It looked back at them – its eyes were so bright Bow almost felt pain – and then it exploded into sparks, which swooped across the room, darkening and reddening like tiny stars running out of hydrogen.

The sparks configured themselves into the red ghost, and Bow put a steadying hand on Adora’s shoulder. The red ghost stepped forward, power crackling around its hands, and it fired a blast of dark energy over the head of one of the fallen First One robots; indeed, if Bow’s estimates were right, it would have smacked directly into the machine’s midsection if it had been standing.

Adora gasped.

“What’s wrong?”

She gestured to the ghost. “It doesn’t just look like Shadow Weaver; it _is_ Shadow Weaver. She’s been here, only Shadow Weaver would use magic like that!” As Adora said this, the floor started to glow again, and looming images of Shadow Weaver started to take form –

\- and, dwarfed by her, images of Catra. Most were frozen, ringed in red lightning and clearly in pain. One was dodging the same kind of dark bolt that the ghost had fired.

Bow’s voice was as cold as death as he said, “She did this regularly?”

“Not often, but…definitely more than once. Catra would act out, and Shadow Weaver would…”

“Well.” He forced himself to let go of Adora’s arm; his hands were trying to clench into fists. “She has to die.”

“Bow!” Adora seemed so shocked by Bow’s statement that the light in the floor died, and the images of Shadow Weaver and Catra vanished. “She was just trying to make us strong enough to survive in the Horde-”

“She was _just_ torturing children.” He forced himself to calm down, without much success. “Good parents don’t do that. Good parents don’t even _think_ about doing that. And I don’t care how she justified it to you, I don’t care what she said, I don’t care what the Horde says; this is wrong. I knew the Horde needed to be stopped, but this? This is monstrous.”

* * *

As they stepped out into the next area, the bright ghost appeared again, a shining outline blazing in front of the dark sky.

The ruins had opened out to reveal a deep ravine, the structure around them in such disarray that most of the area was exposed to the sky. There were shattered parts of structures around – a long-destroyed elevator, the stub of a broken bridge – but meaningfully, this was the furthest they could go without some very careful work.

The ghost was moving again, heading forward – less a purposeful walk, more like it was being pulled forward by its raised hand, which held its weapon aloft. Its free hand reached down to its belt, withdrawing a shape; to Bow, it looked like it could be some sort of short blade, although the lack of detail in the image made it hard to tell.

The image died. Moments later, it flickered back to life, slightly closer to the edge. It was clutching the wrist that had been raised, which seemed to no longer have a hand attached to it, and was having visible difficulty moving. There was a shimmering dot on the ground. Its leg moved slightly, as if kicking something Bow couldn’t see over the cliff-

The image died again. At the spot where it had stood, there was a dull mark on the ground; Bow wasn’t an expert, but it looked like blood – preserved by a thousand years on a dead world. There were vague grey fragments, looking like chipped stone, lying next to the stain-

Suddenly, Entrapta was in his ear. “I’m getting some really weird readings off those chips. Could you grab me a few? I really wanna take a look at them.”  
Bow fumbled in his belt, withdrawing a small bag. “Okay. I’ll do what I can.” He reached down, picked up a few of the shards, and packaged them.

Adora’s head jerked upwards, as if she was receiving some transmission. “I’m getting another message from Light Hope. She says that whatever we’re here to get, it’s at the bottom of the cliff.” She began to back up, in the fashion of an athlete building up for a leap. “I need to get down there.”

“Adora, what are you-”

“I have to do this, Bow.” She moved forward, and Bow’s heart began to sink. “This could be the only way to get Glimmer back.”

“Adora!”

She hurled herself over the edge.

* * *

The world blurred before Adora as she plummeted. At the bottom…well, she didn’t know exactly what she’d find, but whatever it was, it was hope. It had to be.

All of her bones complained at the jolt as she suddenly stopped, floating in midair. She felt curiously weightless.

“Light Hope! Is that you? What’s going on?”

“I’m not Light Hope, sorry.”

By waving her arms, Adora was able to get enough movement to turn to look at Bow. The archer was just above her, descending on a slow line.

“Adora.” He didn’t even sound angry; just disappointed. “You _need_ to stop this. You just jumped off a cliff because you thought there might be something good at the bottom. Please, just… _stop pushing yourself so hard_. We can’t lose anyone else.”

“We haven’t lost Glimmer yet!”

“Right, but we’ll have a better chance getting her back if you’re alive!” He held out a hand. “Now come on. Let’s get down to the bottom _safely_.”

After what felt like an age for both of them, she grabbed his hand. “All right.”

“Great.” He took a breath. “Grav arrow A-1, deactivate.”

Weight returned to Adora’s body.

* * *

Adora’s arms were beginning to get tired as they reached the depths of the abyss.

The deepest layer of the ruins was a mess, the crystalline surface spiderwebbed with cracks. Countless holes in the wall led to, presumably, vastly more ruins; whatever this had once been, it was enormous.

The thing that immediately caught Adora’s attention wasn’t any hole in the wall or chunk of shattered crystal, however. It was something jutting out of the floor.

A sword.

The hilt was gold, its intricately designed quillons putting Bow in mind of spread wings. A large gemstone, as blue as Adora’s eyes, was set into the hilt, shining in the glare of their suit headlights. Below the hilt, it appeared to be made out of a similar crystal to the rest of the First One construction that surrounded them – although the way it had sunk into the nigh-impenetrable crystal implied it was built using some more advanced technique.

Adora reached out, her hand stopping just short of the weapon. “This is it,” she said, her voice distant. “I don’t need Light Hope to tell me that; I just…know.”

Bow fiddled with his comms. “Entrapta – are you getting this?”

“Yeah, and it’s _fascinating!_ ” she replied. A whirring sound in the background sounded like repairs being done. “I’ve definitely seen it somewhere before. I need to get back to fixing Emily, but I’ll do some digging soon!”

Adora moved to grab the hilt, and Bow said, “Are you sure it’s a good idea? That…ghost…” He gestured vaguely. “It looked like it was throwing this down here, and I assume it did so for a reason.”

“Light Hope says she recovered some files about that. Some rogue agent.” She took hold of the weapon and pulled.

It slid out like it had been waiting for her, and the dim light glinted on the circuits in the blade. She tested its weight; even Bow, who wasn’t really a specialist in the field, could tell she was unfamiliar with the weapon.

“So how’s it supposed to work?” Bow was just about to answer Adora’s question with some bewilderment when he realised she hadn’t been talking to him. Getting used to Adora’s conversations with Light Hope was going to take some doing. She paused for a few moments, then scowled. “Great. Keep me posted, will you?”

Bow squinted at her. “What did she say?”

“Light Hope doesn’t know what the sword is for. She just knows it’s important, and that when I can figure it out, she’ll be able to tell us.” Adora’s shoulders slumped. “We came all this way for a sharp piece of metal.”

Looking up at the cliff, Bow said, “Let’s get back to the ship. We can try and figure it out there.”

“I don’t know if I have enough oxygen to get back, Bow.”

“You can have some of mine – wait, hang on.” He opened a channel back to the ship. “ _Swift Wind_ , could you come and pick us up? Sending you coordinates now.”

* * *

Shadow Weaver sat in her office, idly playing with a feather.

She pressed a few controls on the computer atop her desk, and a hidden panel slid open in the back wall. It revealed the paraphernalia of an art the Horde tried to suppress: a Mystacorean star symbol, vials of stardust, and power crystals of varying sizes.

She withdrew the symbol, a vial and a crystal, and set to work.

When she was done, the feather sat at the heart of a glyph – something that Mystacor had possessed the knowledge to do, but had never put in the necessary work to accomplish. Oh, well. She had a new role now, and she no longer suffered under the short-sightedness of Mystacor’s self-appointed elite.

Blue light shimmered as she began the rite. It would require some supervision, and even when it was done, it would be some time before it took effect…but take effect it would.

And then, in time, all of the princess’s secrets would be hers, and the Free Territories would suffer a devastating blow…

* * *

Adora stood among the wreckage of her training dummies, dripping with sweat, clearly even more fatigued than she had been at the start. The sword in her hands hadn’t been chipped by the fighting, but it also hadn’t done anything special.

Bow, who had been watching, reached out to pat her gently on the arm, not caring that his hand came away damp with sweat. “It’s okay, Adora. Get some sleep. We’ll figure it out another time”-

The ship-wide broadcast system, largely unused since the _Protector_ ’s change in allegiances, crackled to life, and a deep, sinister contralto began to echo over it. “Attention, all Horde ships.”

Adora went pale, and after a moment, Bow realised why.

The voice was Shadow Weaver’s.

“Please take down all wanted posters and rewards for Princess Glimmer of Brightmoon, the Scourge of the Starways. She has been apprehended and delivered to BST-ILN. She is currently under my personal supervision in the Barzakh Wing.”

The sword fell to the ground, and Bow’s heart sank with it. His best friend, in the most secure prison in Horde space. Adora was taking it even worse; it was like she was shrinking inward.

Indifferent to Adora’s obvious despair, the transmission continued, “Be on the lookout for her accomplices; those rewards remain unchanged.”

Then the signal cut out.

“Hey. Hey, Adora.” He couldn’t quite keep the tremble out of his voice, but Adora didn’t seem to notice. She looked utterly defeated. “You can’t give up now, okay? We’re going to save her, somehow. I don’t know what we’re going to do, but we have to believe it’s all going to work out.” He wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince Adora or himself.

The darkness in Adora’s eyes vanished, a spark of mad inspiration starting a fire behind them. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s all going to work out.” She rose to her feet abruptly. “I’m gonna make sure of it. Light Hope!” She paused for a moment. “Yeah, I know. I need one portal. You got us out of Terzos once, you need to get us back there.” A curt nod. “Wait until we’re in space, then do it.”

“What’s she saying?” said Bow, looking at her quizzically.

“She said that once she ignites the portal, she’s going to need to recharge and recover for a while. No miraculous escapes; we’ll have to get to BST-ILN and back under our own power.”

“Okay. Uh…why are we going to Terzos?”

“Get the others and meet me on the bridge.”

* * *

“Okay, everyone,” said Bow, to an audience consisting of Mermista, Perfuma, and one of Entrapta’s drones. “Adora’s got a plan and a sword and I really want to hear about the first one.”

“Let me guess: she’s gonna cut a hole in the prison wall with the sword.”

Adora didn’t even acknowledge Mermista’s barb. “We’re going to rip open BST-ILN.”

“That’s…really more of a goal than a plan,” said Bow.

Ignoring that too, Adora turned to the drone. “Entrapta, when we take off, Light Hope is going to open a portal to Terzos. I want us on the other side of that portal as soon as possible. That’s going to be everyone’s chance to get off if they want; anyone who doesn’t plan to come on this mission, get off there.”

“Okay, but what’s on Terzos?” Mermista demanded. “Sure as hell isn’t BST-ILN. Why not just portal to Stevess?””

“Because we’d be dead in moments if we tried to ram-raid Stevess in an unarmed ship with no authorisation. I’ve been there a couple of times; it’s a fortress.” A shiver ran down Bow’s spine as he saw Adora’s smile. It wasn’t a happy sort of smile. “But we know someone on Terzos who can help – or at least someone who knows someone who can help.”

Comprehension dawned in Mermista’s eyes. “Crita. She said she had a contact who could get her access to the Horde portal network; that’s who you’re after.”

“Right,” said Adora, in a fashion that reminded Bow of a teacher he’d had once. “If they can fake the credentials to get to a key system, they can get us flagged as a prison transport and we can just stroll into the system over the portal network.”

“Won’t they be suspicious?” This was from Perfuma. “We have had a lot of work done on the _Protector_ ; won’t they notice it? Or at least the damage?”

Adora crumpled. It was like the newfound confidence she’d had since she’d thought up the plan just vanished. “You’re right,” she said, voice hollow. “I can probably get us there, but we’d just be caught-”

Bow snapped his fingers. “I think I have an idea. I’m gonna need some shaped charges and some scrap metal, but we can arrange that on Terzos. So here’s what we do when we’re in the system…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> While you're here, please consider doing something in support of Black Lives Matter - the Best Friends Squad definitely would. I'm not going to link a donation page for it because I don't think AO3 lets you, but hopefully you've got someone you follow on social media who can direct you to a donation page. Thankyou for your time.


	12. Nor Iron Bars a Cage, Part Two: Revolt and Battery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While the crew of the _Protector_ prepare to break their captain out of prison, Catra stumbles on a secret.
> 
> Minor content warning for some blood and physical violence, although no graphic dismemberment or anything like that.

There were five of them: a tall, powerful human woman with light skin and dirty blonde hair; a dark-skinned human man with a trimly muscular build; a slender, green-freckled Plumerian, the vines cascading down her back dotted with pink flowers; a solidly built Salinean, her dark skin illuminated by the sickly green lights on her hair-tendrils; and a Horde maintenance drone, its movements curiously alive, its insectile legs clacking against the metallic surface of the table the others stood around.

Adora nodded. “Okay. I think this plan is actually gonna work.”

“You’re lying again,” Mermista said bluntly.

“Yeah.” Adora bowed her head. “Honestly, I think this whole plan is insane. But I’m gonna go for it anyway, because the only alternative is to give up, and I _refuse_ to give up.” She looked at each of them. “But before we fine-tune anything, I need to know: who’s coming with me? I want to make sure the plan doesn’t need anyone who wants to do something not-crazy.”

Bow slammed a fist down on the table, seeming less genuinely angry and more like he’d just always wanted to do that. “I’m not leaving my best friend to rot in a Horde prison,” he said, offering his best imitation of Glimmer’s cocky smirk. “And hey, I came up with the craziest parts of this plan. I’m with you.”

Perfuma thought for a moment. “I will join you as well. The universe has given me a great gift: the power to help it to a greater state of balance. If I won’t use it to help my friends as more than a glorified gardener, then what use have I?”

Then Entrapta’s newest drone shifted. “I don’t…make friends easily. It never seems to work out, and I can never figure out why, and it’s always kinda frustrating. But you guys are my friends…and the captain is my friend. I’ve seen so much fascinating stuff since you guys got me to interface with Emily, and I wanna see so much more of it with you guys. I’m coming.”

“Also, you really want to see if Adora’s sword does anything cool,” said Bow.

“I really, _really_ wanna see if it does anything cool.”

All eyes then turned to Mermista, who rolled her own. “Look. I’m still not, like, part of any great rebellion or anything. But I know that if it was me in some crappy Horde cell, Glimmer would be there. If it was _any_ of us, she’d be there. Except maybe Double Trouble, I guess.” She smiled wryly. ‘Sides, I’ve already gotten beaten up for you guys once; another couple and I might start to like it. I’m in. Let’s go give ‘em hell.”

Adora’s voice was thick with emotion as she said, “Thank you. For everything.” She rose to her full height. “Entrapta, keep an eye out for that portal when we take off. Everyone else, do what you can to prepare.” She turned to leave-

Mermista caught Adora before she hit the ground. The last few days’ worth of exhaustion and stress had obviously all caught up with her at once.

“Ugh,” grunted Mermista. “Perfuma, come give me a hand with Admiral Naptime here.”

* * *

The bar on Terzos was dark, dingy and ill-smelling. Most of the tables had been through hell; some even had energy burns on them. Slumped over the bar was a purple-skinned, red-haired figure, with the muscle development of someone who exercised for use, rather than show.

“Oh. Hey, Salinean,” slurred Crita, adding the bottle she’d just drained to the forest of empties in front of her. “How’s Shortstuff? Didn’t think you’d be back here to see little old me.”

“Captain’s actually in trouble. Like, the really bad kind.” Mermista’s gills flicked as she took a deep breath. “We kinda need your help.”

“She bein’ held prisoner in a liquor store? ‘Cause that’s about the only help I can offer.”

Mermista gave her a look and said, “First part’s right. Don’t think they have a liquor store in BST-ILN, though. Doesn’t really help the vibe.”

Crita suddenly became a lot more sober. “BST-ILN?”

“Yeah. So, like, that contact you mentioned who could get you into the Horde computers? We’re gonna need to have a word with them.”

“One condition, Salinean.” Crita looked her dead in the eyes. “You gotta take me with you.”

“Uh…why?”

“Look at me!” The bottles shook as Crita thumped the bar. “I was never a good rebel, Salinean. I twisted it into vengeance at any cost, an’ it took you to stop me killing a whole lot of people. Now I’m just sitting here, testing how much alcohol it takes to finish me off.” She looked so sincere that Mermista actually felt uncomfortable looking at her. “Let me do one thing right. Let me help you save Shortstuff.”

Mermista studied her for a few moments, and then her hand went up to her ear. “Yeah, Adora? Crita wants to come along.” After a few moments, she lowered her hand and told Crita, “No drinking on the job.”

* * *

Drones scuttled over the outside of the metal shell they had built around the _Protector_.

Adora eyed it critically. “I’m still not sure about that fake bridge. Those dummies won’t fool anyone for more than a minute.”

“Nobody’s going to get that close a look,” Bow told her. “It only needs to hold up to distant inspection. Other than that, it looks okay.”

“Yeah. I just…I really wanna get this right. We won’t have a second shot. Are you sure we can’t-”

“Adora.” Bow brought his hands together. “It’ll be _fine_. We don’t have unlimited time to prepare; we need to get underway as soon as Mermista gets back with Crita and our access codes, so we can’t fine-tune everything to perfection. Believe me, I wish we could…but we can’t let the perfect kill the good. We need to have it _good enough_.”

Adora’s worry was still clearly displayed on her face, but she nodded. “Okay. And it’s a _pretty good_ lookalike for a Mark Three.”

The _Protector_ had its own disguise now, assembled from some wreckage they’d collected in the outer system – long-abandoned ships, their crews either missing or long dead. These had been taken apart and converted into a shell around the _Protector_ – a near-perfect recreation of the boxy hull and high, exposed bridge of the obsolete, but still in use, Mark III heavy prison transport.

One of the drones skittered up to them, and Entrapta said, “The charges are fitted, and I’ve done what I can with the circuits. We shouldn’t draw any suspicion when we pull the trigger.” The legs skittered against the ground. “I’ve never tried to rig a ship to do this before. I can’t wait to see how well it works!”

Adora’s expression got a few notches more nervous.

* * *

Five sets of eyes, plus the lone purple sensor of a drone, studied the miscellany of data registers and documents that Mermista and Crita had spread across the table. “These are our credentials and documentation,” Mermista told the group. “We’ll be able to, like, get into BST-ILN, and we’ll be in the Horde personnel database. We even have an exit, although I could only get us an exit to the portal gate over in Fumeros, ‘cause the security wasn’t great there. Downside is…we’re broke.”

That would put them only a couple of jumps away from Terzos; the current flight plan actually went through the Fumeros portal to get to Stevess. Adora nodded and said, “If it’s what we could get, it’s what we could get. We can worry about money after we save Glimmer.”

Mermista pushed part of the pile toward the drone. “And this is the stuff Entrapta wanted. I hope you’re using it for useful stuff and not, like, working on the galaxy’s most overengineered vibrator or something.”

The drone’s single purple eye blinked up at her. “Why would I need something to vibrate that – oh. _Oh._ Uh. No, I need most of this stuff for the plan.” A teasing note drifted into her voice. “If you _want_ a vibrator, you’ll have to wait until after the mission.”

Nodding slowly, Mermista said, “You’re starting to shoot back now? Nice.”

* * *

Shadow Weaver’s office on the _Fright Zone_ was filled with an acrid smell, and the Commodore had a glowing blue crystal sitting on her desk atop a pile of what looked like ash, shot through with tiny motes of light. Strangely, whatever had burned didn’t look like it had even slightly scorched the desk.

“You wanted to see me, Commodore?” asked Catra, making the word _Commodore_ sound like _up yours_.

“Ah, Catra. Report. How are your preparations proceeding?”

“Excellently, Commodore.” Catra permitted herself a tiny smirk; this was going well. “All ships of the _Constrictor_ ’s design are going to be stopped and searched on sight, patrols are concentrated around the prisoner’s cell, all security interlocks and checks have been renewed, and a couple of nearby cells have been filled with observers instead of prisoners. It’s locked up as tight as possible.”

“Excellent. Now, I am taking one further step to improve security and stationing your squadron with the guards on the Barzakh Wing. Your fighters will be assigned to one of the internal hangars in case they are required.”

“With all due respect,” said Catra, showing the exact minimum of ‘acceptable’ respect, “my squadron will be more useful out there patrolling, ready to intercept-”

“We cannot assume that the first line of defence will work,” Shadow Weaver told her bluntly. “Your squadron will be _exactly_ as useful as possible no matter where I put it, is that clear?”

“Crystal.” Shadow Weaver’s gaze didn’t even flicker down to the gem at Catra’s words; she was good. “I trust you’ve assigned us a dormitory, so I’ll get my squad and we’ll set up in there.”

“Oh, and Catra…” There was unmistakable menace in Shadow Weaver’s tone. “If Adora escapes us again, I will hold you personally responsible. Your failures are legion.”

“My squad brought in the prisoner you’re using as bait.” Catra’s eyes flashed. “The only reason you can _try_ this plan is because of m-”

“Because of a member of your squad _I assigned_. You would have failed without my involvement.” Shadow Weaver glared at Catra and finished, “You are excused.”

“Yes _ma’am_ ,” snapped Catra, and headed out.

* * *

The _Protector_ , and the outer shell that they had dubbed the _Manacle_ , erupted from jumpspace into the Fumeros system.

“All right, everyone,” said Adora, settling into the pilot’s seat; Emily could handle most of this, but if an emergency arose, Emily’s programmed responses wouldn’t be quite enough to save them. “To your places. Let’s do this.”

Bow rose from the console, allowing Mermista to take his place. There had been a lot of debate over the best people to send, but in the end it had been decided that Mermista would stay behind on the ship as backup – if they needed to make a more violent exit than planned, they’d figure out some way to get access and Mermista would help cover their escape. Entrapta was also going to need to stay behind, and the Horde tended to deploy Plumerians planetside, so Perfuma would stick out like a sore thumb. That left Adora, Bow and Crita as the “away team”.

More unfortunately, the only thing they would be able to get away with, assuming the plan worked at all, was Adora’s sword and Horde-standard equipment. His bow would have to stay here until he got back.

The weapon stowed safely in a locker, he headed to the galley to grab some food. The meal was, as ever, going to be modified Horde ration bar slurry; there was still some leftover food from Adora’s attempt to prepare dinner, which had been a little light on the seasoning but could have turned out a lot worse. As he entered, he saw it was deserted, save for a purple-skinned figure sitting on a bench.

“Hey.” Crita brandished a cup in a half-mocking toast; Bow knew that it probably only contained water – Crita had actually been really good about her newly imposed temperance, not touching a drop since they’d left Terzos – but it set him a little on edge anyway, and he reminded himself that was unfair to her. “You holding up okay?”

“I’m not going to lie, I’ll be glad when it’s done.” He gestured helplessly. “She’s been my best friend for years, and now she’s in serious trouble. And I need to be the strong one, because Adora is on the edge of going to pieces. How about you? I know we’re not your usual backup.”

“Don’t worry about me.” The cup she was holding – a crude assemblage of cheap metal – began to buckle as her hand clenched around it, a gesture that made sure Bow would, in fact, worry about her. “I’m gonna make sure this gets done right. No matter what.”

Bow took a deep breath. “Okay, just…be careful, please?”

“No promises.”

* * *

“Hey.” The cloudy eyes of her cellmate, bundled up on the corner of his cot, flickered over to her, and Glimmer forced down her frustration. “Are you doing okay? Don’t want to talk?”

“Shouldn’t talk. Not about anything. If you tell me, she’ll know.”

“Okay, you keep saying that, but who is ‘she’?” demanded Glimmer. “How is she supposed to just ‘know’? Surely they can’t monitor us well enough to hear everything?”

“They don’t need to.” The man shuddered. “Gets in your head. Nothing’s safe. So keep nothing.”

Blue light sparkled in the man’s hands, and Glimmer’s jaw dropped. “That’s magic,” she breathed, voice little more than a whisper. “You can do magic. Are you from Mystacor?”

The blue light grew into a magic circle, like she’d seen her aunt Castaspella use before, hovering above his hand as he raised it, fingers curling inwards like he was holding an invisible object-

Then, to Glimmer’s horror, he shoved the blue glow into his own face in a single motion. His body spasmed, twitching in ways that she could tell would be extremely painful. She’d leaped to her feet as he applied it, although she couldn’t get across

“Why are you doing this?” Glimmer demanded. “What could possibly be worth hurting yourself this much?”

“You’ll know. She hasn’t got to you yet, but she will.” The cloudy eyes bored into her. It was suddenly very, very hard to believe ‘she’ was just some delusion, some self-defence technique the man’s mind had fallen back on. “Emptiness is safe. Can help you be safe, if you want-”

“No,” Glimmer managed. “No, thank you. I know you mean well…but I’m not giving up.” She grinned sheepishly, a near-futile gesture in the darkness of the cell. “It’s a family trait; my father was legendary for it.”

“Not giving up,” her cellmate told her, an unexpectedly heavy note in his voice. “Emptiness protects others. The ones you love. Keeps her away from them.”

“Is there someone out there you’re protecting?” Glimmer asked softly. “Someone in Mystacorean space, maybe? Who are they?”

“Don’t know.” He sounded so worn down, so exhausted, that Glimmer’s vision started to blur with tears. “Can’t know. But emptiness keeps them safe from her.”

* * *

A low burble of instructions and commentary filled the air within Stevess traffic control as Vereth fiddled with xer console. “Attention, unknown ship,” xe intoned into the microphone, “this is Stevess control. State your identity.”

“Understood, Stevess control.” The voice coming over the channel was near-emotionless, with a barbed edge to it. Vereth issued a mental shrug; a bad attitude wasn’t technically a crime. “This is the _Manacle_ , code 5B91P0PS. Special delivery for Shadow Weaver.”

Vereth tapped the controls with a tanned finger and frowned. “ _Manacle_ , I’m not seeing you on the schedule.”

“Uh…could you double-check? I don’t think either of us wanna get the Commodore pissed off at us.”

Vereth’s fingers scraped against xer stubble, and xe took another look through the registry. “Ah, there we go. Someone screwed up your metadata. Docking clearance to BST-ILN granted. We’re getting some weird readings on your core, though; please avoid the main transport paths in case of a malfunction.”

“Understood, Stevess control.” The _Manacle_ ’s comms officer sounded surprisingly relieved by this. “Core’s been a piece of shit for a while. This piece of junk should really have been decommissioned ages ago.”

“I really don’t know why they keep any Mark Threes around, _Manacle_.”

A few minutes passed as the _Manacle_ proceeded along the indicated path, and then the channel opened again.

“Stevess control, our core’s starting to melt down. We’re loading what personnel we can into life pods. Guess the Commodore’s gonna have to do without-”

A flare appeared on sensors as the _Manacle_ blew up. Vereth’s finger tapped the screen; the _Manacle_ crew might still be recoverable. The ship itself, however, was probably debris.

* * *

“You think they bought it?” asked Bow over the comms as their life pod drifted away from the scattered metal.

“My performance was, like, award-worthy.” Mermista had stayed with Perfuma and Entrapta on the _Protector_ , which had used the “explosion” of the “ _Manacle_ ” to land on an asteroid and await the opportunity to pick them up. _Swift Wind_ was champing at the bit to cover their escape, too.

“I’m not talking about you sweet-talking traffic control, Mermista. I mean the explosion. If they realise that was a con job, this could get a lot worse before it gets better.”

“Our energy signatures were almost perfect!” This was from Entrapta. “They’ll probably write off any glitches as sensor blur. You’ll be fine.”

“Good to hear. Thanks, Entrapta.” Bow shut off the channel and turned to the two others with him in the life pod. All of them were wearing Horde armour: Adora seemed well-used to it, Crita seemed indifferent, and Bow knew his own unfamiliarity with the heavy, low-effect gear could be a problem. “Okay, everyone. Remember, we’re going to go in, pull off the plan, rescue Glimmer, and get out. Nobody does anything stupid and heroic like trying to hold the entire garrison off by themselves. We do this quick, quiet, and clean-”

Crita gave him a nudge. “Quiet, kid. They’re closing in. Comms off, helmets on.”

“I still can’t breathe in this thing,” muttered Bow as he pulled on the disguise.

* * *

Glimmer finished her half of the slop and sighed.

“Always tastes bad,” her cellmate told her.

“Yeah, I know. Back on my ship, we’d mix this stuff with herbs and spices and whatever else we could get. It made it taste like…” She shrugged. “Well, like whatever was put into it. Mermista would always put a lot of spice into it just to mess with people-”

“Stop!” snapped her cellmate, and Glimmer jolted backwards. She was used to sad, not angry. “ _Don’t. Tell. Me._ She’ll take it from me. She’ll take it from you, too, when she gets her hooks into you.”

“No-one’s taking _anything_ from me,” growled Glimmer. “This prison is just a box. I’m not gonna be here forever, and neither are you.”

The man studied her for a few long seconds, and then turned away.

* * *

The officer in charge of their “rescuers” studied them carefully, expression unreadable through the visor on her helmet. “And what’s that you’ve got there, soldier?” she said, visor pointed directly at the sword. “Definitely isn’t standard issue.”

“Battlefield salvage,” Adora said, feeling extremely thankful that the Horde-issue helmet concealed her face well enough that her tells weren’t going to show. “One of our captives had it, and we’d gotten orders to ensure anything this weird made it to Commodore Shadow Weaver. I had to choose between this and the captain to make it into the life pod.”

The officer nodded. “That tracks. Hand it over and I’ll make sure it gets to her-”

“No can do. I’m under specific orders to make sure only the Commodore gets a hand on it.” Adora planted her feet, ready to stare the officer down if necessary. She _had_ to keep the sword with her.

After a few moments, the officer nodded. “That also tracks. I’ll make sure you get the chance to deliver it. Commodore’s pretty busy, though. Some new prisoner she brought in.”

“I’m sure she’ll be ready soon,” said Adora, 

“Great.” The officer stood. “Helm, get us back to the prison; can’t keep the Commodore waiting.”

As the recovery ship began to turn towards the prison, the bay doors closed. Not that it mattered; Adora had already seen the prison enough. It resembled nothing so much as a core of chunky interlocking cylinders, fitted with limbs extending out into a snowflake pattern of docking bays, specialist cells and other systems. Hopefully, they’d be dropped off close to Shadow Weaver’s Barzakh Wing; if they had to make their way across the whole structure, this could get difficult.

* * *

“Hey!”

Adora’s blood froze. She knew that voice.

Catra strutted up through the scattered groups of Horde soldiers moving along the corridor, a smirk on her features. “You guys came off the _Manacle_ , right? Musta been tough.”

“Uh…” Adora desperately pitched her voice down a little. “It was rough, yeah,” she grated, horribly aware of how fake it sounded, injecting a trace of a weird accent just so that something, _anything_ , would come between her and instant recognition. “I had friends on the _Man-_ ah _-cle_.”

Bow visibly winced.

“Squadron Leader…” said ‘Kyle’, and Catra’s teeth flashed in a way that had nothing to do with a smile. “Shouldn’t we be getting to bed? We’re scheduled for an early start tomorrow, and I don’t want to get in trouble for falling asleep on duty again.”

“Shut up, Kyle-” snarled Catra.

“No, he’s right,” said Lonnie. “We’re runnin’ late, Catra. Shadow Weaver’s gonna be pissed if we don’t get to our stations on time tomorrow.”

“Fine.” Catra issued a mocking salute. “See you around, _Man-_ ah _-cle_ girl.”

As Catra and her squad headed off into the distance, Adora started to breathe again.

* * *

It was partway through Catra’s squad’s rest period when her eyes popped open. Something was wrong.

She squinted into the darkness, and then it snapped into sharp relief: Kyle’s bed was empty. There was no sound from the toilet cubicle, so he definitely wasn’t in there. Nor had he, from the looks of things, withdrawn to the more defensible location in Rogelio’s arms that he occasionally did in outright defiance of regulations.

That didn’t make sense. While Kyle’s sense of direction was of course a standing joke, even he couldn’t get lost on the way to the restroom. And something about him had seemed _off_ , lately. Even Catra could tell he seemed a bit more confident and outgoing, occasionally flirting with Rogelio instead of seeming clueless about it, and something about his smell bugged her…

She rose from her bed and, silent as a ghost, followed the Kyle-scent. The most recent trail led out the door and onwards, out into the corridor, to a grate leading onto the prison’s ventilation ducts. The lightest tug told her that someone had undone the grate, then carefully slid it back into place behind them.

Well, this was all very suspicious, and she had Shadow Weaver’s instructions to deal with anything suspicious. Also, if Kyle was going to cause more problems for her after Adora’s shit, she was going to pull off his skin and wear it like a coat.

She flipped the grate open and squeezed inside, sniffing. There was something about the Kyle-scent that was nagging at her, like a hangnail…

* * *

A few hundred meters away from Catra, Bow pulled his head back out of the vents. “There’s room, but not much – I can fit, but I’m not sure about you guys. Some of the junctions are really narrow.”

He could just about make out Adora’s mutter of, “Piss.”

“I can handle it, guys. I just need to get through once.” As the other two formed a wall between him and anyone who might go past, Bow stripped off the Horde armour, leaving him with just the stolen uniform he’d been wearing underneath it, plus a tool belt. Carefully, oh so carefully, he slipped into the vents, wincing as his shoulders scraped against the edges of the junction.

A left, a right, a short climb, a little slide, around another few corners…and Bow froze. There was a faint tip-tapping, scratching sound, like some clawed creature was moving through it…But no. From the sounds of it, it was coming through a grate set into the wall of the vent, not the path he actually needed to take. He stayed in position, breath held, as the sound moved past him and started to recede, then resumed his mission.

He grunted – more from surprise than pain – as his arm brushed up against the freezing metal of the duct wall. That would be a coolant pipe. Good. That meant he was getting close.

Finally, he withdrew a small tool from his belt and set to work.

* * *

Catra poked her head around the corner. Kyle, apparently absorbed in his work, was delicately pushing open another grate, this one obviously right next to Shadow Weaver’s office.

Taking advantage of the distraction, she slipped up behind Kyle. Grabbing him by the collar, then the wrist, she forced him into the kind of hold that got very uncomfortable, very fast. Her mouth was right next to his ear when she hissed, “Who are you, and what have you done with Kyle?”

“Squadron Leader? What-”

“Don’t play dumb with me; I can get that from the real Kyle. Who would never be breaking into Shadow Weaver’s office late at night, just as a data point.” She inhaled deeply through her nose. “Also, you don’t _quite_ smell right. So I’m gonna ask you again: who are you…” She tightened her grip. “…And what have you done with Kyle?”

All of a sudden, Kyle visibly relaxed. “Oh, very well done, darling,” he said, a flirtatious note appearing in his voice. “I had hoped this would last longer, but it seems my opportunity has passed.” Black-green light flared, and Catra instinctively released her grip as she drew back. “If it helps, I’m informed your friend is alive and well and will be released at the next opportunity.”

Catra’s brain took a few seconds to grasp that her eyes weren’t being fooled; that had really just happened. Where Kyle had stood until moments ago was a black-clad, green-skinned, surprisingly attractive reptilian alien, one of Kyle’s shirts draped over their bodysuit. For some reason, the stranger looked familiar-

Catra snapped her fingers as it came to her. “You were on Terzos – you’re one of Adora’s rebel friends!”

“‘Friends’ is rather a strong term, darling,” the alien said coolly. “Co-workers, maybe; drinking buddies at most. But where _are_ my manners? Double Trouble, at your service.”

“I’m taking you in,” snarled Catra. “Shadow Weaver’s gonna take you apart.”

“Oh, she may well do that, but that would be such a wasted opportunity for you. One would think you didn’t want to learn any of Shadow Weaver’s secrets – no, you can’t hide it from me, you look suspicious every time someone mentions her name.” Double Trouble looked over their shoulder at her and delivered a nictitating wink. “So really, this comes down to your choice: either you can try and drag me in front of your boss – or we can both find out what’s going on.” Teeth glinted in the darkness. “So what’s it to be, darling?”

* * *

The grate slid out of Bow’s way, and he squeezed through the junction into the tangle of service ducts and maintenance systems that surrounded the coordinator core. This was larger, at least – he could stand up, adjust his binder and so on. Not for the first time, he wished there had been a good way to sneak his bow on board.

He stepped around a corner into what looked like a central room, and metal rang against metal as a heavy patrol drone stood. This was the kind of thing they installed on larger ships than the _Protector_ : a person-sized orb of green-tinted metal, single red eye glowing, resembling one of Entrapta’s drones but much larger and fitted with much deadlier weapons. Behind it was a waist-height pillar tipped with a translucent, circuitry-filled block: the coordinator core for this section of the prison. The drone looked directly at him, and he tensed, ready to react.

He flung himself out of the way of its blast, trying to circle around the drone. Another blast shot through the space he’d been in a second previously, destroying another drone that hadn’t reacted yet, and he leaped past his persecutor towards the core. His hand disappeared into a pocket on his belt, and he slapped a chunk of circuitry and steel on top of the core, hearing the hum of gravity clamps come online.

He hit the ground with a grunt; he’d been so desperate to get the core marked that he’d forgotten to think about his landing. He needed to be careful about that; it did no good telling the others not to get up to stupid heroics if he was going to do them instead.

He heard the click-hum of the drone’s weapon charging and rolled out of the way of a shot that left a melted patch in the floor. An alarm should be starting any moment now…

And then the drone’s eye flickered, shifting from a baleful red to a gentle lavender. “Hey Bow!” it said, Entrapta’s high and scratchy voice forming a truly jarring contrast with the war machine it was now coming out of. “I’ve got at least partial access to the Horde computer system now.”

“Can you find Glimmer?”

Lights flickered. “Probably? It might take a little while, though – oh wait no there she is. She’s in…hang on.” A hologram emitter on the drone flickered, and a filmy map of the prison popped into existence, lights appearing on it. “We’re _here_ and the Barzakh Wing is over _here_ , not too far. Glimmer’s cell isn’t listed in this registry, but there’s a _lot_ of security focus on this part _here_ , so…”

“So she’s probably around there,” said Bow, studying the map in an effort to commit as much as possible to memory. “Can you get us access to the security permissions? If we could assign ourselves to the patrols, we could just walk in there and walk out again with Glimmer.”

“Uh…no. I’m real sorry, Bow. Prison security’s not connected to the drone control network like that; it’s one-way. And I didn’t think to make the link easy to remove.”

“So if I try to take it off and stick it on a security console, I could break it,” said Bow wearily. “Thanks anyway, Entrapta. At least we’ve got some control over the drones?”

“Yeah, I can get them to do stuff. Well, some of them.”

“We’ll have to see what we can do with that, then. Thanks, Entrapta.” He rubbed his chin. “We’re going to have to try another way in.”

* * *

“I must have lost my mind,” said Catra, as she slid out of the duct into Shadow Weaver’s office. It looked less cluttered than the one on the _Fright Zone_ – no stone hands in glass cases, for example – but still pretty weird; apart from the desk and chair that were standard, there was a dull red couch, a containment cell in one corner, and some kind of large, technical-looking device that she couldn’t even pretend she understood, all illuminated by a single light fitting at the room’s centre. Her eyes lingered on the rows of blue crystals hanging from the walls: some sparkling with an inner light, some dead and dull inside. A couple were cracked. “I’m gonna get executed for this, I just know it.”

“Perhaps, darling, but the danger adds such a _frisson_ of excitement to the whole affair, doesn’t it?” Catra shot them a glare as they moved over to the computer console sitting atop Shadow Weaver’s desk. “Suit yourself.”

“That’s not gonna help. I’ve been into Shadow Weaver’s computer before; she never keeps any of her stuff on there.”

“Oh, I’m not after her files, darling; if the only thing you can use to blackmail someone is a signed confession, you’re not a very good blackmailer. Could you get me in? I’ve heard you try and keep up to date with people’s codes.”

There was only one person they could have learned that from, and something deep in Catra’s gut twisted at the reminder of Adora’s betrayal. Oh, well. This could be her chance to learn why that mattered so much to Shadow Weaver. The Commodore’s personal computer used a different system to the _Fright Zone_ ’s general mainframe, so she stepped around the desk, bashed in a long and detailed code, and held her breath…

The screen noted a successful login, and her impromptu partner in crime grinned. “There we go. Now to get started…” Their throat bulged, followed by their cheeks, and they spat a surprisingly large package into one hand.

Catra was uncomfortably reminded of her own encounters with hairballs.

The package, once opened, turned out to contain a small data drive, which Double Trouble immediately slotted into the appropriate port on the machine. A progress meter popped up onscreen, although it didn’t have any indications as to what, exactly, was progressing.

As Double Trouble worked, Catra studied the crystals on the walls, which she’d just noticed were labelled – each one had a name tag mounted underneath. Her eyes flicked from name to name, none of them meaning anything to her – Esmerelda, Peekablue, Edeltran, Micah, Abby, Rebekkah. Growing bored, she headed back behind the desk and demanded, “So if you’re not after her files, what _are_ you after?”

“I chose my blackmail analogy very carefully, darling. You’d be surprised how many times someone has paid me to do this…Ah, now we’re cooking. Let’s see what we’ve got…”

The skull-white face of a Prime appeared onscreen, and all Catra’s internal organs tried to shut down at once-

* * *

“Could you give me a hand with something?”

Zeveth turned to face the other guard and said, “Pardon?”

“I need an extra couple of hands to help with something. Could you help me out?” The newcomer had a similarly slender build to Zeveth’s own.

“Oh yeah! Sure. Don’t have long, though – I need to get to patrol, and it’s the Barzakh Wing, so if I’m late it’s probably my ass on the line. Wish I could just stay in traffic control, but no, we gotta cram as many people onto guard duty as possible.”

“Commodore’s awful, yeah,” said the newcomer. “Come on, this’ll only take a minute.”

Moments after xe ducked into the room, Zeveth felt a sudden shock to the back of their head, which xe recognised as a stun prod hit from a couple of misfires in basic training.

“Sorry, bud,” said the newcomer, as darkness descended. “If it helps, they’re not going to think you were late to patrol.”

* * *

Shadow Weaver’s voice came out of the computer’s speaker, and Catra relaxed as she realised this wasn’t a live transmission currently going out, but a recording that the shapeshifter’s work had reconstructed – yes, there were some points of distortion and static, as you’d expect if it couldn’t entirely be recovered or reassembled.

“Lord Hordak,” the recording of Shadow Weaver was saying. “I trust your mission goes well-”

“Spare me your small talk, Commodore,” spat the Prime – Hordak, presumably. While Catra could make _Commodore_ sound like _up yours_ , Hordak made it sound like _cockroach_. “I have received the reports from Apocyn, Shadow Weaver. You swore you could get this little experiment back under control and you are _failing_.”

Now that she was regaining control of herself, Catra could make out some subtle deviations from the Prime face that she’d known on propaganda posters since she was a child. This one looked…older, somehow, thinner in the face, and its eyes weren’t the creepy but comfortingly familiar green, but rather simmering red pits at the bottom of deep, dark holes. The whole affair put Catra uncomfortably in mind of a skull – like the skeleton of a fallen Prime had risen to haunt her.

Shadow Weaver’s recorded voice started up again. “A trifling setback, my lord-”

“Determining that is not your function, Commodore; it is mine.” Those burning eyes narrowed. “Give me one good reason not to terminate this experiment now.”

“I can still bring the subject back under our control, Lord Hordak. She was always sentimental; if she has displaced that sentiment from her squad to the rebels aboard the _Constrictor_ , then the captive we took on Morlax should admirably serve as bait.”

Hordak evaluated this. “Very well, Shadow Weaver. You will have one last chance to bring this situation back under control. Fail, however, and I am placing a kill order on the subject. If we lose control of this, we lose _everything_.”

The recording froze, and the wheels in Catra’s head started to spin. Logically, “the subject” was Adora…but the subject of _what_? What was “the experiment” attempting to learn?

The sound of loud footprints sounded immediately outside the door, snapping her out of her calculations. Her hair – and her fur – stood on end, a markedly unpleasant experience when you had as much of it as Catra did.

The door began to slide open, and Catra’s pulse rate spiked upwards. She began to drift toward the corner, not knowing if she was going to dive for the vents or ambush the guard or just hit Double Trouble on the back of the head –

Black-green light flared, and the voice of Shadow Weaver snapped, “What is the meaning of this intrusion?”

“Commodore!” The guard who had just opened the door executed a hasty salute. “I was not informed that you had returned.”

“Naturally not.” Double Trouble – now guised in Shadow Weaver’s mask – waved a hand dismissively. “Now go away, soldier; you are delaying my work.”

“At once, Commodore.”

The door slid shut.

“Nicely done,” murmured Catra.

Double Trouble shrugged and shifted back into their preferred form. “It was passable, darling, nothing more. I would have liked more time to study her, but it seems I am condemned to a life of rush jobs through my own hubris.”

“Not much more of one, spy.”

Catra spun to face the owner of the new voice, realising, a fraction of a second before she laid eyes on the speaker, that she recognised it.

Polypus stood next to the grate they’d removed, his cold, black eyes glinting above the barrel of a pistol. A trickle of magenta blood flowed from a scrape on his shoulder, and his face was expressionless.

* * *

“Okay, so my name for the next…little while is Zeveth,” said Bow, examining the ID card, “and apparently I’m gonna need to use xe/xem.” He made a face under his helmet. “Not gonna lie, I don’t feel good about stealing someone else’s pronouns.”

“We don’t have time to find another candidate,” Crita told him bluntly. “If we’re gonna save Shortstuff, we’re gonna have to get in, so shut up and deal with it.”

“Yeah, I know.” Bow slipped the ID card into the wrist holder he’d withdrawn it from. “Why is xe using a card, and not a verbal passcode like some of the other places?”

“It’s a security feature,” Adora told him; Bow could tell she was aware of the irony. “They don’t want prisoners to have access to guard security codes.”

Crita snorted. “I mean, that part’s working.”

As they moved out of the small storage room, Bow instinctively looked backwards at the storage closet. Hopefully the real Zeveth would stay nicely unconscious and tied up until they could get the job done.

* * *

Catra dropped into a fighting stance, semi-instinctively kicking Double Trouble’s legs out from under them; hopefully, that would drop them under Polypus’s aim. Shots flew, and she hurled herself aside, grunting as her shoulder struck the wall. As Polypus corrected his aim, she leaped backward and kicked off the wall, sliding behind the desk, keeping ahead of Polypus’s shots more by luck than judgment. She wasn’t even sure where Double Trouble had gone in the confusion.

Shadow Weaver’s computer console disappeared in a spray of shrapnel as one of Polypus’s shots went through it.

“Doesn’t it strike you as a tad hypocritical to object to my spying, darling?” came Double Trouble’s voice from somewhere – Catra guessed they had somehow managed to make their way behind either the couch or the gadget, but apparently they could also throw their voice fairly effectively. “I mean, you’re here to spy, that’s pretty obvious.”

“Shadow Weaver wanted eyes on the ground. So she brought some in.” Polypus fired a test shot through the couch, shifting sideways, always moving towards the door, as if looking for a better firing position.

“Yes, but you’re not here just to spy for Shadow Weaver, are you?” said Double Trouble. “You’re also here to spy _on_ Shadow Weaver.”

Catra poked her head above the desk, then ducked back under it as a shot charred the surface. She’d seen Polypus’s newfound scowl, though.

“And how did you know _that_ , spy?” demanded Polypus, putting a couple of shots into the desk. Catra could tell it wasn’t going to be able to endure much more punishment.

“Because you just told me, darling.” Catra could _hear_ their grin. “It stood to reason, though; this Hordak character obviously doesn’t trust her, and for good reason – if she’s already requested a spy, why not give her exactly what she asked for? You’re not worried she might find out?”

“It’s not like you’re going to have a chance to tell her,” said Polypus coldly. He pivoted and fired a shot right next to the bulky device, shattering one of the gemstones on the walls. Double Trouble hissed, though; apparently the shot had either narrowly missed them or just clipped them.

“Oh, darling, I won’t need to. Your ‘mission mode’ is so obvious, it’s almost insulting. I’m not sure how you manage to fool _anyone_. You’re at best a third-rate spy, coasting on the gullibility of your squad. I had you made the moment I saw you.”

“And yet here I am,” said Polypus, stopping his crab-walk in front of the exit, “with a gun held on you. Guards should be along shortly.”

A shape appeared in the air, emerging from Double Trouble’s hiding place, and Polypus put a shot through it-

As Kyle’s stolen shirt drifted to the ground, charred by laser-burn, Catra made her move.

She jumped on top of the desk, leaping off it again as the battered furniture gave way under her weight. As Polypus fired a shot at where she had been moments before, she caught the light fitting in the centre of the room with one hand, suppressing a grunt of pain as the hot surface scalded her fingers. Twisting in mid-swing, she managed to get _just_ enough momentum to reach the wall – crystals fell from their fittings as she threw herself from point to point, using the mounting points for the crystals as hand- and footholds, staying just ahead of Polypus’s blasts before descending toward the Salinean’s head like a meteor impact.

Her claws slashed at his eye, narrowly missing as he ducked out of the way, and Catra idly noted that aiming for the eyes was starting to become a habit with her. She landed on her feet, naturally, then brought her balled fist up into his stomach; she was rewarded with the clatter of his gun hitting the ground. Before he could recover his balance, she opted for a brutal strike to the face – and she felt his nose give way under the impact.

Cold but hate-filled eyes glared from over Polypus’s ruined, gushing nose as Catra shook magenta blood off her hand. The Salinean went for an open-palmed strike, which Catra sidestepped easily; she countered with a vicious blow to his throat, then, as he staggered backwards, grabbed him by the hair-tentacles and slammed his face into the wall.

Polypus collapsed in a heap, a pool of his blood starting to form under his face, and Catra’s claws itched. It would be so easy to finish him off, make sure he never had a chance to report to Shadow Weaver…

“I wouldn’t stain your hands further, darling,” said Double Trouble from behind her. “It’s really time you got back to your squad; you’ll be running late.”

“And what are you going to be doing?”

“Best you don’t know.” Double Trouble scooped up the unconscious form of Polypus, nose wrinkling as magenta blood continued to dribble. “Suffice to say, though, I will be making sure he doesn’t trouble any of us for a while.”

“And that he’s great leverage for keeping me quiet about you doesn’t enter into it,” said Catra sarcastically.

Double Trouble fluttered their nictitating membranes at her and said, “Why, darling, don’t you trust me?”

“Not for a second.”

“Good answer, darling. There may be hope for you yet.” Sharp teeth glinted. “Don’t think of it as blackmail; think of it as an incentive not to mention this to anyone. After all, we both got what we wanted, didn’t we? No need to make a big deal out of it.” They nodded at the vent. “You should probably go through there. There will be questions if you march halfway across the segment in your sleepwear.”

* * *

“Hey.”

This was the first time Glimmer’s cellmate had actually reached out to her, and it struck her as absurdly funny that his opening gambit was a simple “hey,” like they’d unexpectedly bumped into each other while grocery shopping, and she had to suppress a laugh.

“Been thinking about what you said. About not being here forever. Didn’t want to, but had to.” There was an intensity in his voice that startled her. “Haven’t wanted anything in years. Safer not to want anything. But now…want more. Want to get out of here. Want to escape her. Get her out of my head. Want to remember who I’m protecting…who I love.”

“Do you have any idea how we could get out? I have…a friend here who could help us. Well, ‘friend’ is a strong term, they’re more like a co-worker. But they can’t get us out of the cell alone.”

“Know the patrols. Know the layout.” Blue light shimmered around his hands. “Have way of opening door.”

“You’re not worried that ‘she’s’ going to catch us?”

“Very worried. Want this anyway.” He rose to his feet, coruscating power starting to form circles at his fingertips. “Had forgotten what hope felt like. Thank you.”

Glimmer thought for a moment…but there was only one answer she could give. “Let’s do it. A station this big, there must be a ton of places to hide.”

A disc of magical power struck the forcefield at the front of the cell, and the dim blue light that had been radiating from it flickered and died.

* * *

“Of course I’m sure, fool,” said Double Trouble in Shadow Weaver’s voice, from behind Shadow Weaver’s mask. “This traitor attempted to assassinate me in my own office and called on you to ensure a façade of loyalty. Prepare a cell for him-”

An alarm started up, and Double Trouble suppressed a sigh. That could have been better timed. “Never mind, I’ll ensure he is contained myself! Move!” The guard hesitated. “MOVE!”

That did it.

As the guards headed out, Double Trouble stuffed Polypus into the containment cell; thanks to its position in the corner, with little to no room behind it to take cover, it had gone mostly unscathed. A few key presses sealed the door and authorised a regular course of sleeping gas to keep the prisoner subdued. It might only last until Shadow Weaver got back, but it wasn’t like they had time for long-time solutions.

“Sorry, darling,” murmured the shapeshifter. “You just stay here and have a nice nap, now. We might as well call it professional courtesy.”

A black-green halo surrounded them as they shifted into a Horde uniform and headed out. From the sound of it, the _Protector_ had arrived…and now someone had gotten themselves into trouble. Probably Adora, honestly; it seemed to be her default state.

Oh, well. Time to do what they could to salvage this.

* * *

Catra emerged from the vents with a scowl on her face and marched right to the squad’s dormitory door, ignoring the looks of the passing soldiers.

Lonnie was wearing a matching scowl. “Catra? Where’s Kyle? Polypus said he was going to look for you guys-”

“Worry about them _later_ ,” hissed Catra, pulling on her uniform. “Right now, we need to worry about getting on duty.”

“Kyle’s one of us!”

“Then he would want to keep _us_ intact.” Catra checked the charge on Adora’s pistol – actually, at this point, it was probably better to think of it as her own, won in battle. “And that means we report for our patrol duty, and worry about him _when we have_ _time!_ ”

Lonnie eyed her suspiciously, and Catra just knew she’d lost a few points for that one. Oh well. She was still Lonnie’s squadron leader; she didn’t have time to worry about being her friend. Besides, no friends meant no gaps in her armour.

The sound of alarms started to echo in the distance, and Catra started to run.

That alarm could only mean Adora was here.

* * *

Both Adora and Crita swore at once as the alarm started. They’d claimed a guardpost as their own while they planned their next move, so they absolutely couldn’t miss it…but didn’t have any controls to turn it off.

“Drill?” offered Bow half-heartedly.

Adora shook her head and opened the bag holding the sword. “That’s the standard prisoner breakout alarm. Someone’s found their way out of their cell.”

Crita grunted. “So…probably Shortstuff?”

“If it’s anyone else, I’d be surprised,” said Bow. “Trying to take on an entire prison at once is a very Glimmer kind of move.”

The sword leaped into Adora’s hand. It looked to Bow less like she’d drawn it and more like it had decided it was time for it to be wielded.

“Adora?” Bow gestured toward the weapon. “Are you sure that’s the right call? I mean, it’s not exactly standard issue…”

Adora’s voice was distant as she said, “Yeah. Yeah, I think I’ve got it figured out. It wants to be used. It wants me to fight…for the honour of Grayskull.”

Suddenly, Bow couldn’t even see his friend. Couldn’t even _look_ at her. All he could see was an explosion of white fire…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks, as ever, for reading!


	13. Nor Iron Bars a Cage, Part Three: Breaking and Exiting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew of the _Protector_ make their escape from BST-ILN.
> 
> Trigger warnings for blood, scars and violence. If you need anything else tagged, please don't hesitate to let me know.

What stood before Bow was Adora, and yet not Adora. It was her face, her skin, and her eyes – although they shone now, as if lit by blue fire. It was even her braid, although it had been dyed a more intense sunlight-yellow, and her tall, powerful build.

What was unusual was that she was now at least eighteen inches taller than she had been, and clad in white and gold armour so bright that Bow could barely look at her. Most of her body was covered in it, save for her face – even her neck was covered in jointed metal, like it was designed to lead into a helmet she didn’t have. Her breastplate was adorned with a golden starburst, shining like a sun; a fist-sized sky-blue gemstone was set into its core, just above Adora’s sternum, itself illuminated from within. Her gauntlets and greaves were also golden, as was the circlet on her brow – which was fitted with stylised wings. A red cape was flowing behind her, billowing in ways that the limited air motion in the Horde prison should not have really allowed.

She looked glorious, powerful, radiant…and strangely familiar.

“She-Ra,” said Crita, her voice hushed – as though they were standing in a cathedral, rather than a guard post in a Horde prison.

Adora, eyes blazing like the sky, looked at her reflection in the dark mirror of a deactivated monitor –

A sound that can only be described as, “Wha?!” exploded out of her mouth, and she staggered backwards. The sword hit the ground; she seemed not to notice, otherwise occupied looking at her hands as though they belonged to someone else. For all Bow knew, they did. Eyes wide with shock and confusion, she felt out the edges of the wings on her circlet. She turned to Bow and demanded, “What happened? What’s going on – what am I wearing-” A thought occurred to her. “Where did my Horde armour go?”

“How should I know!?” A certain edge of panic began to creep into Bow’s voice, and for some reason he couldn’t be bothered suppressing it. “It happened to you, not me! I don’t know what’s going on any more than you do, why would you think I did?”

“I don’t know much about life outside the Horde, Bow! For all I know this is a normal thing that I just haven’t heard of before!”

“How could that _possibly_ be a normal thing?!”

“I DON’T KNOW! I never got training in Non-Horde Stuff! I needed starsdamned _crib notes_ on what kinds of relatives people can have! Nobody mentioned whatever this is!”

“Kid!” Crita pulled off her helmet, the better to look Adora straight in the eyes. “ _Calm. Down._ This is a good thing.”

“Okay, but what is…” She gestured wildly, misjudged her newly extended reach, and smashed a monitor. “‘This’?”

“It’s a _miracle_ , kid.” Crita was by no means short, but she still needed to reach up to clap her hands on Adora’s shoulders. “I don’t know how, or why…but you’re She-Ra.”

“She-R – oh, that thing Perfuma worships.” Adora nodded slightly, then blurted out, “Wait, what the fu-”

“ADORA!” Bow forced his temper down. “Guys. We should sort this out after we save Glimmer.”

Adora nodded. “You’re right. Sorry. I was…”

“Startled?”

“That’s a good way of putting it, yeah.” More light flared, and a helmet formed around her head – white metal, with a golden visor covering her face and those same wings extending backwards from each temple. “Let’s move.”

* * *

The Barzakh Wing’s design was a criss-crossing network of dark corridors, lined with the faint blue light of force fields. With that in mind, Catra and her squad had deployed into a

“So, uh, not that I’m questioning your judgment,” said Scorpia carefully, “and in fact I’m sure you’re right, but…why are you so sure this is Adora?”

Catra rolled her eyes. “Be realistic, Scorpia, who else would it be? We’ve got her captain and nobody’s seen her ship for a while.” Something chimed on her belt, and she withdrew a small communicator device. “Also, I had them send out a query to the drone we planted on it. Unless I miss my guess…” She studied it theatrically, the readout only just visible in the darkness. “Why, yes, it’s here in Stevess.”

“Okay. Uh. That’s pretty good reasoning.” Scorpia thought for a moment and added, “You sure you’re gonna be okay? She really seems to get under your skin.”

“You just make sure her little friends don’t help her get away again,” snarled Catra.

“Right. Right. You, uh, you know I’ve got your back-”

The door at the end of the corridor was torn loose, and Catra’s eyes protested as the light flooded in – more light than the corridor outside the prison should really have provided, even given that she’d adjusted to the darkness. The others weren’t doing any better; she could just make out Scorpia sheltering her eyes behind a claw, and an irritated hiss came from Rogelio.

The heavily armoured eight-foot juggernaut that had torn the door open looked at the metal door in its gold-armoured hand as though it had never seen _either_ before. The torn metal clattered against the floor, and Catra became suddenly, uncomfortably aware of how much strength it would take to rip a prison door out of its housing. Two allies were just visible behind it, wearing Horde armour minus the helmets – she thought she recognised them from wanted posters, but she couldn’t make out much detail under the circumstances.

The juggernaut stepped forward, readying a sword that would have looked ridiculously large in a normal hand. Catra could tell it wasn’t used to the weapon – when Rogelio rushed forward, stun prod in hand, it didn’t so much parry his attack as just swat him clumsily aside. The big lizard smacked into the wall and folded up like paper; clumsy or not, the juggernaut obviously had a _lot_ of raw power.

Scorpia lunged past Catra into the fray, and just as quickly flew past her in the other direction; from the clatter, she’d slammed right into Lonnie, and since both appeared to be lying pretty still, she assumed the impact had knocked them both out. This was _not_ a good trend and Catra was not here for it. As the juggernaut gestured down a corridor, she reached for the pistol –

“Catra, wait!”

The juggernaut knew her name…and its voice was familiar. Haunt-your-dreams familiar.

It couldn’t be. Not her. Not like this. How would that even be possible?

And then the face of the juggernaut, a blank golden mask on a white helmet, vanished. Catra’s peripheral vision caught the other two rebels slipping off, but she didn’t really process the sight; the one-two punch of the juggernaut speaking in Adora’s voice and revealing Adora’s face had shut down most of her brain.

* * *

Bow’s eyes flicked to the display screen on his wrist, then back to the cells. In the darkness of the corridor, he could make out the _presence_ of people in the cells, but nothing about them – face, age, build, in most cases even _species_ – could really be seen in the dim light of the barriers. Only a few cells were empty.

“So many people,” whispered Crita.

“I know. And believe me, I’d like to get as many of them out of here as possible. But…”

“But we don’t know how much capacity we’ll have,” finished Crita. “I know. Doesn’t mean I like it.” She looked around quizzically. “I would have expected more guards.”

“I think Adora’s drawing them out-”

A shot blazed past over his head.

* * *

Adora and Catra were moving slowly in circles, like duellists waiting for the chance to initiate the fight.

“Hey, Adora,” Catra managed, trying desperately to smother the tremor in her voice under layers of bravado. Adora didn’t seem to notice it. “Trying out a new look?”

Adora held out her free hand. “Come with me, Catra. You don’t even like the Horde! Why are you staying? Come with me. Get away from Shadow Weaver-”

“Never!” Catra’s eyes blazed, and she spat, “I will _never_ join you! Are you _ever_ going to get that through your thick head? It turns out that without you, I _like it here._ ”

“We don’t have to do this, Catra. We don’t have to fight – I know you don’t want to.”

“You ‘know’ a lot that’s not true, Adora,” hissed Catra. She hurled herself at Adora, claws flailing at the deserter’s exposed face. Adora jolted backwards, a little slower than she needed to-

Catra’s claw slashed across Adora’s right eye, missing the eyeball itself but scoring deep lines into her skin. Blood welled up in the wounds, and Adora visibly flinched as her helmet reappeared, seemingly without her input.

Leaping back, Catra snatched up Rogelio’s fallen stun prod; even with her strength and the resilience of her claws, she didn’t want to try and break through that armour bare-handed. Keeping her head low, she swung the weapon into Adora’s right knee, and Adora staggered. A second blow caused the leg to give way, and she fell, the armour on that knee clattering against the ground, followed by her sword.

“Sorry, Adora,” Catra said mockingly. “Thanks for finally completing our mission, though – you’ve brought back the _Constrictor_ and all the escaped prisoners on board. Maybe they’ll let you have a cell near your feathery friend, so you two can watch each other _break_.”

“Please, Catra. We were friends…”

“You have new friends now, Adora. And you’re going to have so much time with them in BST-ILN. There won’t be anyone left to come for you…” The prod left a trail in the air as Catra swung it at Adora’s head-

Forks of green lightning crackled over the armour as Adora caught the weapon in one hand. After a few moments of increasing pressure, the stun prod broke, its head crushed by the sheer force Adora had brought to bear. A mild jolt raced up the handle, and Catra dropped it – more from surprise than pain.

“All right then, Catra,” said Adora, rising to her feet. Her voice felt like a dagger, carved from ice, being shoved into Catra’s spine. “If that’s the way you want to play it, then you know what? _That’s fine with me_.”

* * *

“Okay, Horde scum. Put your hands up, and I might let you live,” barked a familiar voice, and Bow’s eyes lit up.

“Glimmer! It’s me!”

“Bow?” There was the faint click of a safety being engaged, and then Glimmer’s arms, wrapped around his neck in a hug.

“I knew you’d come,” Glimmer said, her usual confidence almost fully restored. In the darkness, Bow could just about make out the Horde prison uniform she was wearing. She looked at Crita. “I wasn’t expecting you, though.”

“I had some ground to make up,” growled the purple-skinned woman. She raised a Horde-issue pistol as a shadowy shape poked its head around the corner, but Glimmer held up a hand.

“That’s my cellmate. He got me out of the cell, and…” Her eyes were pleading. “I don’t know what they’ve done to him, but we need to get him out of here.”

“Of course,” said Bow, gently pushing the pistol downwards. “Should we try and drop the cell barriers in general?”

“Uh…I don’t think so. Most of them are…they’re just broken, Bow. Look, they’re barely reacting to us. I don’t know what Shadow Weaver does to them, but…”

“I hate this,” muttered Bow. “So many people suffering, and we can’t do anything to help them.”

“We can’t do anything to help them _yet_.” Glimmer’s eyes narrowed. “One day, we’ll come back here with a _fleet_. We’ll tear this hellhole open and get _everyone_ out. But for now…”

“For now we just have to suck it up,” said Bow sourly.

* * *

Adora didn’t use the sword. She couldn’t; even at this point, she wasn’t going to use a potentially deadly weapon on her best friend. Well, ex-best-friend, she supposed, but still, she owed Catra at least that much.

Instead, she went for the less lethal option. Catra’s claw strikes rang off her armour as she waited for an opportunity…There it was. As Catra launched a vicious upward strike, Adora picked her up by the shirtfront and simply threw her down the corridor. She wasn’t even, all told, that heavy.

There was a thud and a grunt as Catra hit something, far enough down the corridor that Adora’s newfound halo couldn’t reach it.

“Adora?”

Adora turned to face the new voice.

“Glimmer!”

The armour fell away, bit by bit – as she reached out for Glimmer, it faded from her hand, followed by the arms, then proceeding down the torso. The helmet was last to go, and Adora slowly, reluctantly turned to show her the wound Catra had given her. The bleeding was slowing, at least.

Glimmer’s arms tightened around her body, the prison uniform contrasting sharply with the tight-fitting white and gold fabric Adora apparently now wore, and for a few moments, it was like the station stopped existing.

“I’m so glad you’re safe,” whispered Adora. “If anything had happened to you, I…”

“It’s okay, Adora. It’s okay.”

“Hey guys?” Bow coughed theatrically. “I hate to interrupt, but we’re kind of in the middle of a prison break?”

After a few moments, Glimmer nodded reluctantly and said, “He’s right. We’ll talk more on the ship?”

“Yeah.” Adora let go, and the armour started to reform around her. “They’re probably rallying more guards. Let’s get started.”

Bow’s hand went to his ear. “Entrapta? Let Double Trouble know we need to make an exit.”

* * *

None of them saw Catra picking herself up.

Her gorge rose at the sight of Adora gathering up the rebel leader in a protective embrace, and heart and stomach writhing inside her, she disappeared into the darkness.

She’d known that Adora had betrayed her, deserted her to be with her new friends. It shouldn’t have hurt that much.

And yet it did.

* * *

Double Trouble concentrated for a moment, and black-green light shimmered as they moved into Shadow Weaver’s form. The plan was simplicity itself: stroll in, present themselves to the assembled minions in this guise, and command them to open a docking bay for the _Protector_. Simple, subtle, and easy.

The looming form of the combat drone behind them shifted, its purple eye glowing. Double Trouble held up a now-gloved hand and whispered, “Easy, darling. I’m going to try this _my_ way…”

The door slid open to reveal a Horde command centre, the ideal location for this. The assembled consoles were oriented in a semi-circle, facing a giant display screen. Alcoves high up on the walls contained drones; the glowing purple lights told Double Trouble that they were nicely under Entrapta’s control, and were unlikely to be an issue.

The big screen blinked to life, and Double Trouble’s heart sank as they saw Shadow Weaver’s mask looking down. After a few seconds, they realised they were at least far enough back into the corridor that the commodore likely wouldn’t notice them, but this did rather spoil the point of the whole exercise.

“Execute Plan Delta,” hissed Shadow Weaver’s image on the screen. “Do not, I repeat _do not_ , allow the prisoners to escape!”

Plan B. Did they have one?

They turned to the drone, shifting back to their preferred shape. “Entrapta, darling, can you set these to follow my commands? I would hate to distract you while you make your approach.” The drone made an affirmative beeping noise, and Double Trouble’s face split into a wide, inhuman grin. “Wonderful, darling. I would have preferred to use subtlety…but force will do in a pinch, I suppose.”

* * *

A giant arc of energy carved outwards from Adora’s sword, swatting Horde soldiers out of the way like flies in the path of an oncoming train.

She looked appraisingly at the weapon. “Huh. That’s new.” Another swing hurled another blast. The Horde had apparently been setting up a selection of barricades between the escapees and any possible escape; apparently, none of them had been designed to resist whatever Adora’s sword was doing, and their path was quickly strewn with Horde soldiers who were either unconscious, or who had realised that feigning unconsciousness meant they wouldn’t get beaten up again.

Glimmer’s salvaged Horde rifle made a click-hum noise. A spear of energy blazed down a side corridor, and there was a clatter as troopers flung themselves out of the way. “I’m glad you guys took whatever detour let you find that sword! It’s coming in really – ugh!”

Adora swung around to see that Glimmer had frozen on the spot, and a jagged spiderweb of red lightning was crawling over her body.

“Hello, Adora,” said the voice of Shadow Weaver, and the commodore stepped out of the air behind Glimmer, burgundy robes floating in the energies that surrounded her.

Crita hurled herself at the masked woman, fists clenched, but Shadow Weaver gestured with her free hand, and Crita was flung aside like a discarded snack wrapper.

“You came all this way, and you didn’t even think to greet me?” said Shadow Weaver, in a voice like dripping poison. “Such a disappointment.”

* * *

“Gentlebeings of all genders and none, may I have your attention please?” called Double Trouble, swaggering into the control room with the air of a conquering warlord, two looming combat drones at their heels. “It is my solemn duty to inform you that as of right now, you work for me.”

Technician heads rose, apparently wondering why the drones that defended the control room hadn’t opened fire on the intruder.

“Really, darlings, wishing for my death so blatantly? I usually only get that from my exes.” Double Trouble treated the throng to a full display of sharp teeth. “Don’t worry, darlings, you’ll find that my leadership isn’t onerous; you may actually prefer working for me. All I ask is that you open the closest docking bay door to the Barzakh Wing, and then get away from the controls.”

“And what if we don’t?” The technician, a solidly built human, emanated truculence, but Double Trouble only grinned and pointed.

The Horde technician dived out of the way as the drone to Double Trouble’s left fired a blast past their head and into the enormous display screen, which exploded outwards in a spray of sparks.

“Any more questions, darlings?”

* * *

“Shadow Weaver,” spat Adora, bringing up the sword. Energy began to gather on its edge.

“Surely you would not be so foolish as to launch an attack with your little friend here in the path of your attack?” oozed Shadow Weaver. “I thought I had taught you better than that.”

“Let her go.”

“Why, certainly…” Shadow Weaver’s eyes narrowed behind her mask. “But first, you must surrender yourself.”

“Why me?” demanded Adora. “Why chase me across the galaxy? Did you know about _this_?” Her gesture somehow encompassed both the sword and the armour. “ _What are you playing at?_ ”

“I have invested too much effort in you to give up now.” Shadow Weaver reached out, her open palm reaching for Adora’s face. “You have had your fun…but it’s time to come home now, Adora.”

“I already…” The red lightning squirmed over Glimmer’s body, and Adora raised her hands. “All right. All right. Just…don’t hurt her.” She began to kneel, the armour fading from her body…

Then she threw the sword through the air.

Bow snatched it out of the air as he ran forward, scything the edge down into Shadow Weaver’s left arm. The energy humming along its edge discharged in a pulse of blinding light, blending with the flare of Adora’s armour reappearing around her, hurling Glimmer and Bow away, and the sword clattered to the ground.

Shadow Weaver’s severed hand hit the ground with a thud.

Icily, the Commodore studied the stump of her left arm. A tangle of wires hung from it, sparking intermittently.

“Insolent child! You will pay for your folly!” snarled Shadow Weaver, as she turned to face Bow-

Glimmer’s gun made a clicking sound, and Glimmer muttered, “Piss.”

“How naïve. _Obviously_ I would disable your stolen weapon while I had you in my power.”

“Just because a gun doesn’t shoot,” Glimmer said pugnaciously, taking the gun by the barrel, “doesn’t mean it’s not a weapon.”

She moved like lightning.

The _thok_ sound of the gun’s stock slamming into Shadow Weaver’s face was one of the happiest sounds Adora had heard all day. The mask clattered to the ground, revealing a ruin that Adora had seen in her nightmares for at least a decade now.

Shadow Weaver’s remaining hand came up, but parts of her face were still visible. The deep runic scars, looking almost like they’d been burned into her face, glowed with a deep red light, the colour of drying blood.

Adora’s hand clattered against the helmet as she reached up to the would over her eye.

Shadow Weaver made a noise of pure, animal rage, and disappeared in an explosion of mist.

Glimmer looked around the area, before darting around a corner. Following, Adora was struck by the sight of Glimmer squatting down, resting a gentle hand on the shoulder of her unnamed cellmate, who was curled in on himself.

“It’s okay,” she was saying. “She’s gone now, okay? Breathe. Breathe. Just focus. Breathe. Focus. Breathe…”

After a few repetitions, the masked man drew a deep, shuddering breath. After a few more, he managed, “Thank you.”

“Come on,” Glimmer said softly. “We’re nearly at our ship. We’ll make sure you have a nice quiet room to yourself, and plenty of food, and we’ll try and find some way to help you, okay?”

The man nodded and rose to his feet.

* * *

The _Protector_ ’s ramp struck the floor with a clang, and Mermista permitted herself a smirk as the exosuit stomped towards the fray. This was going to get _messy_.

Since its repair, Noelle the exosuit had received a red and white paint job, and Entrapta assured her it was functioning at full capacity. It had even been outfitted with a sheath on the back so she could bring her trident with her.

Then there was a loud clunk sound, and Mermista cursed, fumbling for the eject button as the suit froze up. She took a deep breath. “Entrapta! Your stupid suit broke again!” She hit the button, and the torso opened like a flower and disgorged her. She aimed a frustrated kick at the motionless machine’s leg. “Always letting me down.”

The prison docking bay was noticeably smaller than, say, a town. There were a few other ships of the _Protector_ ’s design spread around the place, plus a few wings of fighter craft – mostly the older Carnivore design. The room had been sealed by a set of doors that put Mermista in mind of a giant horizontal maw, like the mandibles of some great beetle; the shimmering, filmy field across it would be there to keep in the atmosphere.

The sound of running feet came from the corridor, and she drew the trident. With or without the exosuit, she could still kick the ass of any Horde clown.

As the Horde forces moved in – Mermista was pretty sure she recognised several of them as Salineans – she readied the weapon…

There was a crash of breaking pottery, and Perfuma stepped out on the ramp, a determined expression on her face and green light shimmering around her hands. Huge green vines burst from the wreckage of a pot, and Perfuma gestured as they lashed out at the Horde forces, ensnaring them in emerald ropes, each as thick as Mermista’s arm.

“I could’ve taken them,” said Mermista, hating the defensive note that was creeping into her voice.

“I am sure you could have.” Mermista squinted at her…okay, friend, she guessed, but either Plumerian sarcasm was very hard to read or Perfuma wasn’t using any. “ _Swift Wind_ and I will hold the docking bay. Go and find our friends.”

As Mermista headed towards the exit, she heard the docking bay of the _Protector_ grinding open. That would be _Swift Wind_ making an entrance.

* * *

As Adora moved towards the newest knot of Horde soldiers, one of them turned and hit another on the back of the head with a stun prod. Glimmer’s gun, flung through the air with as much force as she could muster, took out the third.

The last standing member of the squad shone black and green for a few moments, before being replaced by the grinning figure of Double Trouble.

“I see you’ve picked up a new friend,” said Double Trouble, eyeing the masked prisoner critically. “Is the next plan to put up a Positions Vacant advertisement, darlings? How many more strays do we plan on taking in?”

“We took _you_ in,” snapped Glimmer.

“Because you realised it was more useful to have me working for you than your enemies.” The grin sharpened. “Still, who knows, this one may turn out useful.”

Ignoring the banter, Adora hurled a blast down a side corridor, knocking another squad to the ground. The prison apparently had a lot of guards, and all of them were closing in.

“Hey!”

The door behind Double Trouble had slid open, and Mermista gestured at them through it. “You guys think this is, like, a holiday retreat or something? Get your asses in gear or we’re gonna leave you behind.”

The clattering of feet behind them told Adora that there were more troops on their way, and while she wasn’t feeling tired, she couldn’t be sure how long that would last.

It was time to get going.

* * *

Moving at a sprint, Glimmer and Bow half guiding, half carrying Glimmer’s cellmate, the group burst into the docking bay and made directly for the _Protector_. It was easy to spot; most of the other ships in there were wrecked, and the marks of _Swift Wind_ ’s guns were carved into the deck next to them. As they watched, the sapient fighter moved back into the _Protector_ ’s docking bay; probably wise, if he didn’t want to be left behind.

“Hurry!” called Perfuma, waving at them from the ramp. To one side, a vast, tangled mass of vines writhed slightly, traces of metal the only sign of captured

As Horde soldiers began to boil into the hangar, Crita turned, lifting a pair of salvaged Horde rifles. “Get going, you lot. I’ll hold them off.”

“Crita!” This was from Bow. “We said no stupid heroics! Get over here!”

“Gotta break that rule, kid-”

“No you don’t!” snapped Glimmer. “The Rebellion needs _everyone_ it can get! Stop trying for big dumb dramatic sacrifices and _get back here!_ ”

“Sorry, Shortstuff. I gotta-”

A length of vine lashed across and buffeted her in the chestplate, pushing her onto the ramp. With a grinding sound, it began to close, the vine holding Crita in place – blazing away at the advancing Horde troops, but unable to move – until the gap was already too narrow for her to leave.

Shots pattered off the hull like rain as the _Protector_ began to rise.

* * *

Adora’s armour vanished as she reached the bridge. The pilot’s chair was still a little awkwardly scaled – she was, after all, still around eight feet tall – but she could still kind of fit, and that was all she needed right now.

Someone had apparently managed to batter through the drones and retake control of the docking bay; the doors were closing. Pushing forward on the controls, Adora ramped up the speed, feeling the deck shudder beneath her feet as the engines heated up faster than they were technically rated for.

If she couldn’t make it out of the docking bay before it closed, it wouldn’t matter what state the engines were in.

They were in luck; the closing maw scraped against the sides of the _Protector_ , tearing plates from the hull, but not digging in deep enough to cause meaningful damage. Adora pushed as much power into the engines as she dared; there was no way there wouldn’t be a cloud of fighters on their tail in moments.

As they headed for the portal, Bow pressed the transmitter button. One quirk of the Horde’s portal system was that it was pretty heavily automated; the code they’d gotten from Crita’s contact would allow them passage to Fumeros, whether or not they were marked for death.

Adora corkscrewed wildly to one side, and a fusillade of shots passed through the space they’d been in moments before and pattered off the armoured ring around the portal.

“Adora!” Entrapta’s voice cut through her focus. “The engines are redlining! I’m doing what I can to keep them stable, but I can’t give you any more speed!”

“Then we’ll just have to hope for the best,” Adora said grimly, narrowly evading another barrage. “Just a few seconds more…”

* * *

Shadow Weaver seethed as the tiny dot that was the _Constrictor_ disappeared into the portal and was gone. She had to assume that Adora’s new powers were related to her visit to either Morlax or Maragraf – in which case she herself had missed an opportunity to acquire the sword, presumably the artefact that had permitted this affront.

She stood in the ruins of her office, which had been demolished, somehow; Polypus, who had been found unconscious in the containment cell, would presumably know the details, but it was likely going to be at least four hours before he regained consciousness.

Her fingers moved over to the comm control on her bracer, and she said, voice like a snarl, “Catra. Report to me _at once_.”

As she studied the ruins, she felt the distinct _tug_ of her magic taking root. Good. The imprint would begin its work soon…but the Free Territories would have to wait.

Adora’s little rebellion had just become a big problem.

* * *

As they disappeared into jumpspace, the hastily scrambled fighters from Fumeros fading from view behind them, Adora rose from the pilot’s chair. The glow around her faded as she shrank, returning to her normal form.

After a few moments, she groaned in pain, and Glimmer ran to her side.

“Adora? Are you okay?”

“It’s not too bad-”

“Don’t bullshit me, Adora. Come on, let’s get you to sickbay. Bow, you’ve done first aid, you come with us.”

* * *

This was, all told, a lot better than Adora’s first encounter with the _Protector_ ’s medical bay. Her arms and legs were free, for one thing, and instead of being surrounded by strangers, it was Glimmer and Bow.

“I _think_ what happens,” said Bow, “is that when you’re in your…She-Ra form, you still take the injuries but the armour and whatever power it is you’re drawing on…moderates them? So you were still able to move, fight and so on with a busted knee, your scratches stopped bleeding quickly…but you still took some punishment, and it all came crashing in when you changed back.”

“So how bad is it?” Glimmer demanded.

“Well, I’m still not an expert, but…Adora, you should probably stay off that leg for a few days, give your knee time to recover. It’s not broken, but it’s not looking great. As for the scratches…I’m afraid they’re probably going to scar. It could have been a lot worse; at least there’s no damage to the eye.” He rose and headed for the door. “I’m gonna go see if I can rig up a knee brace or something, maybe some crutches – let you get around a bit without risking more damage…and I think you two need to talk in private, anyway.”

“Bow-”

“ _Talk_.”

And then he was gone.

Glimmer turned to Adora and breathed out. “I’m gonna kill him…but he’s right. I do need to talk to you.”

“You do?” Adora felt like she was having trouble breathing. “About what?”

“You.”

Adora blinked up at her in confusion.

“Right, that didn’t make sense. I’m sorry. I’m not…very good at this.” Glimmer took a deep breath. “Adora, I…like being your friend. Sometimes it feels like I’ve known you for years, not just the couple of months since you saved us. But…it took me a while to figure it out, but I don’t just want to be your friend.”

The confused blinking continued.

“I…have feelings for you, Adora. I want to take you to dinner in the highest spire in Brightmoon, go for a picnic in the woods outside the castle, hold you as we both go to sleep. I guess what I’m saying is…would you consider…being my girlfriend?”

Girlfriend. That was definitely a word Adora had heard before – from Mermista, she thought. Bow had given her a very brief explanation. She didn’t have the best understanding of it…but she knew enough to understand that it meant she would be spending more time with Glimmer. Her heart twitched at that thought, and she realised that it appealed to her. A lot.

“And if I say no?” she heard herself say.

“Then I’m sad. But hopefully we can still be friends, at least.”

Adora thought for a long moment. “The Horde…never taught us about this stuff. It never taught us a _lot_ of stuff. But…” She waved a hand helplessly. “I wanna learn. I want to try.” She took a deep breath. “If you really want to try being… _girlfriends_ , you said? Then I want to give it a shot. And if it doesn’t work out…then hopefully we can still be friends.”

Glimmer reached down and took Adora’s hand. “Thank you, Adora. Oh, and…one other thing.”

“Oh?”

“I shouldn’t have run roughshod over you about your hair when we were first starting out. It’s your hair, not mine; I should have let you choose.”

“No, it’s okay. I kinda like the braid, anyway.”

Glimmer looked at it for a moment. “It’s looking kind of ratty after the day. Would you mind if I fixed it up?”

“I’d love for you to, Glimmer.”

“Okay. Just try not to move too much…”

* * *

The _Protector_ had set down in a resistance-friendly dock on Terzos, and two figures stood on the ramp.

“You sure you’ll be okay?” asked Glimmer gently.

Crita looked out at the skyline and smiled. “You know, Shortstuff, I think I will. You were right; the Rebellion needs everyone it can get.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“I thought I’d track down Optikk and the rest of my cell. Maybe we can get started again, do it right this time. How about you?”

“Still headed for Brightmoon. Perfuma and Mermista still want to get back to their homes, and…honestly, so do I. I’ve been away too long already.”

“Shortstuff…” Crita pressed something into her hand. “Something to remember us by, out here in Horde space. OK?”

Glimmer studied it: a small holo-image projector on a thin silver chain. Her voice wavering, she said, “Mermista said this had an image of your family…”

“It’s carved on my heart by now, Shortstuff. I don’t need it.”

“Okay. Thank you. I’ll protect it at all costs.” She forced a smile. “And Crita…Mermista wanted me to let you know that she thinks Optikk might have a thing for you.”

“Optikk, huh…I’ll think about it.” Crita stepped off the ramp. “Good luck. I hope you guys stay as big a thorn in the Horde’s side as they tell me you’ve been.”

“And I hope you guys can be just as big a thorn.”

“Gonna try my best,” said Crita, and started walking. It didn’t take her long to fade into the city.

* * *

Glimmer opened her eyes to see the Great Hall of her mother’s castle on Brightmoon, lit by countless wavering candles. Her mother’s throne was vacant, and the entire too-large room was shrouded in darkness.

The last thing she remembered, she’d helped Adora to bed – just offering the warrior a shoulder to lean on, after they’d spent the afternoon in Glimmer’s cabin working on kintsugi. It wasn’t just the girlfriend thing, either; Adora had been hurt trying to save her, and that meant the injury was her responsibility.

So if the last thing she remembered had been bedtime, that meant this was probably a dream.

“In a way, child.”

The voice was a deep contralto, and Glimmer spun around to see its source – a feminine figure, clad in the purple of a Mystacorean adept, leaning casually against the back wall. A mane of dark hair contrasted with her light grey skin, and her eyes – glowing a stark white – studied Glimmer from above a dull magenta veil.

“Who are you?” Glimmer demanded. “If this is a dream…”

“I am here to help, child.” Light shimmered around the figure as it rose to its full height. There was something strangely familiar about it, but Glimmer couldn’t place why. “You know of Adora’s guide, of course.”

Glimmer shivered. “Light Hope…”

“Did you not wonder if she was the only one?” The apparition’s voice dripped slowly into Glimmer’s ear. “If there might not be other guides the First Ones sent to aid those of import?"

“She told me about Light Hope, though. You’re not her.”

“Certainly not, child. I am _your_ guide, not Adora’s; your journey is not hers, and the guidance I give you will be what _you_ need. As Adora is guided by Light Hope…so shall you be guided by Light Spinner.”

A loud buzz sounded – clearly from the waking world, and Glimmer reluctantly clawed her way back to consciousness. In the confusion of leaving the dreamscape, she didn’t notice one of the candles changing – its gentle golden flame turning a low, simmering red.

“Uh, Glimmer?” It was Mermista’s voice. “Gonna need you to make a judgment call.”

* * *

The sensors all went berserk, and a boxy Horde hypershuttle erupted from jumpspace in front of them. It was too small to hold troops, so unless the cargo compartment had a fusion bomb – and scans weren’t picking up the tell-tale signatures of one – it was probably not going to be a threat. Mermista still eyed it suspiciously, though; on watch, it was basically her job.

“Attention, _Constrictor_ ,” came a crackly, distorted voice over the comms; it could have been some kind of vocal disruption, or it could just be damage to the transmitter, Mermista couldn’t tell. “We are here to request asylum. I repeat, we request asylum.”

Another, deeper but similarly distorted voice cut in, “I hit Sh-” and was immediately cut off.

Mermista coughed and said, “Yeah, uh, I’m gonna need to check with the captain-”

“We don’t have time to mess about, _Constrictor_! We have targets on our backs! Are you gonna let us aboard or what?!”

Mermista flicked over to Glimmer and asked, “Uh, Glimmer? Gonna need you to make a judgment call.” With Glimmer’s answer in hand, she switched the headset back to the shuttle and told them, sarcasm dancing in her voice, “We’re sorry, but you’ll, like, need to fill in Form AJM-F5 before we can allow you to board-”

“ _Constrictor_!”

“Okay, fiiiiine. Captain says you can board. Docking bay is opening. Try anything funny and we’ll, like, space you, though.”

* * *

Adora’s hand crept towards the sword, and she forced it back away again. They were already under _Swift Wind_ ’s guns as the fighter hovered in the corner; she didn’t need to be _that_ ready. Plus, it was quite a large sword and even with the knee brace, she was still using a crutch; she probably wasn’t going to be much use.

The hypershuttle came to a halt and settled down on the docking bay floor. It was a light, fast design, the kind you’d use to transport high-ranking individuals or small, valuable cargoes that needed to get somewhere as soon as possible; its engines, which jutted out the back, even had little fins radiating out from them, a modification carried out for maximum jump speed. The hull was blistered with the scores of near misses; they’d come under fire, and it had presumably taken all their pilot’s skill to bring them through it alive.

The left side of the ship swung open, the outer layer of the tiny vessel’s door forming a boarding ramp, the inner sliding open to reveal…

Adora’s newfound scars started to itch.

“Hey, Adora,” called Catra, as she stepped out into the docking bay, the towering scorpioni woman at her heels. “I don’t suppose that offer of amnesty is still on the table?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That brings us to the end of Starways season one! Thankyou for bearing with my Self-Indulgent Space Bullshit for ninety thousand words, and I hope you're ready for more, because I have three more seasons outlined.
> 
> I am going to poke around at a few other projects before season 2, so I hope you don't mind waiting for an explanation of what the hell Catra and Scorpia are doing here!
> 
> A big thanks to all my readers and all my Glimmadora-shipping friends for bringing us this far, and to SPOPSite for recommending this fic in a recent post!


	14. Appendix

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I am exactly the sort of insufferable nerd who puts a worldbuilding appendix on a fanfic.

**TECHNOLOGY**

**Artificial Intelligence:** True AI is very inefficient when it comes to storage space. Expert systems, such as a hypershuttle’s minimalist on-board navigation or a fighter craft’s autopilot, are typically quite small but also very limited even within their purview, hopeless outside of it. Larger ships can mount more sophisticated “standard cores”, able to handle general tasks such as piloting and maintenance, but typically with minimal personality and a lack of expertise; a good organic pilot can outfly all but the best AI cores, for example. A true human-level AI, capable of developing a personality, holding long conversations, learning entirely new skills instead of iterating on existing talents and so on, takes a large station, and in general those find it more efficient to use overlapping standard cores and expert systems instead of a human-level AI.

**Hypershuttle:** The smallest possible jump-capable ship class, hypershuttles are designed for short trips exclusively. They generally carry only a few days’ worth of air and food, and lack the sensor equipment required for long-distance jump navigation; going a long way by hypershuttle is typically an arduous process, analogous to a road trip across quite a large continent.

**Jump drive:** Most interstellar travel uses jump drive, which effectively shunts the ship into the alternate dimension known as jumpspace. Jumpspace’s properties aren’t fully understood, but in general it’s easier to jump from further out in the system. Travel is system-to-system; it generally takes between six hours and two days to reach the next system, and the engines take several hours to recharge once a jump is completed. Most jump-capable ships are large enough to carry supplies for at least a journey of a few jumps; ones capable of long journeys typically possess large supply bays and a full-time navigator.

**Magic:** Magic is a force underlying much of the universe, but it is in short supply across much of it. Scholars believe there was a period when it was far more prevalent, but that ended at least a thousand years ago. The Mystacor sector has the highest background magic level, making it the heart of magical study; meanwhile, the Horde actively persecutes magical traditions in its space, and several are believed extinct or have, at most, a few practitioners who carry on in secret.

**Navigator:** By using cybernetics to link a humanoid mind to the sensors and processors of a long-distance ship, it is possible to chart more efficient courses between far-flung systems by more effectively exploiting the motion of jumpspace. People who have undergone the cybernetic alterations required to carry out this task are known as navigators, and are considered strongly advisable on all long-distance trips.

**Portals:** Portal systems create networks of mostly-stable passageways through jumpspace. Typically, they’re designed so that ships cannot choose a destination themselves; the portal gate they enter is able to mark out specific pathways for ships to take. Portal gates are generally very large and resource-intensive to create, and it's hard to gain access to a portal network you don't control without the right codes, which serves as something of a brake on Horde expansionism.

**SPECIES**

**Karnoxian:** Karnoxians are tall reptilian sapients, often called “snakemen” – most have short, crocodilian noses, powerful tails, and long tongues, and venomous fangs are not uncommon. Some possess traits like scaled hoods or “rattles” on their tails. They hail from the planet Karnox.

The Horde earmarks Karnoxians for combat roles.

**Lunavian:** Lunavians are a rare alien species from Brightmoon, originally hailing from one of the moons. They resemble feathery humanoids with wings - one set, with hand-like structures on the end, where a human’s arms would be, and the other mounted on the back. Different ethnicities have different appearances; some resemble owls, ospreys, vultures and so on. They are interfertile with humans. Lunavians have a very slow breeding cycle, leading to their low numbers; this would be worsened significantly were it not for their long lives.

The Horde has never issued a formal classification for Lunavians.

**Metamaran:** Metamarans are green-skinned aliens with reptilian traits. They tend to be rare in known space; it is believed that they come from the Far Reaches, where even the First Ones never went. Indeed, the Free Territories are largely ignorant of their presence, while the Horde still suspects them to be a myth.

The most notable Metamaran trait is their ability to reconfigure their bodies, changing skin colour, hair colour, eye colour, body structure, even blood colour and organ arrangement to masquerade flawlessly as other individuals. This ability has a few limitations, most notably that patches of scar tissue are structured in such a way that they cannot shift to anywhere near the same degree. Some Metamarans, who see their shapeshifting as a tool of self-expression rather than a means to engage in deception, practice ritual scarification to ensure they are always identifiable, no matter what face they wear.

The Horde has never issued a formal classification for Metamarans.

**Plumerian:** Plumerians are plant-derived aliens who resemble humans with vines for hair. They possess woody skin and amber-tinted pupils in their eyes. Plumerians use a mixture of consumed and digested food and photosynthesis to function; a Plumerian who goes a long time without exposure to ultraviolet light will likely become unwell. While the dominant culture in Plumerian space is strongly pacifistic, Plumerians are by no means inherently peaceful; despite their disapproval of violence, Plumeria maintains a space navy, and Plumerians sometimes join criminal gangs or enter other environments where violence is only to be expected.

The Horde flags Plumerians for planetside work, typically agricultural.

**Prime:** Little is known about this species, save by the Primes themselves. All known Primes are clones of a specific individual, one Horde Prime; indeed, the species name derives from him. Whether there is a world somewhere in Horde space or the Far Reaches that is populated with these creatures, or if Horde Prime is some kind of rogue experiment or the lone survivor of a dead world, is currently unknown.

Primes are instantly recognisable by their white and grey skin. The majority are part of a hive mind; rebel spies have revealed the existence of certain “free Primes”, but the known examples of these are also loyal to the Horde. It is unclear why Horde Prime tolerates these “free Primes”.

The upper Horde hierarchy consists entirely of Primes.

**Reptilian:** This is a catch-all term for multiple species, some more common than others, resembling large, lizardlike humanoids. It is generally considered impolite to call someone a reptilian to their face, in the same way that misidentifying an ethnicity among humans is something of a faux pas.

Many reptilian species have trouble communicating in languages developed for human-like speech systems. Different cultures have their own languages, but there is also a generally used lingua franca, also simply known as Reptilian, that is used for ease of communication. Reptilians raised in the Horde typically only learn the Reptilian tongue, since the Horde prefers not to maintain cultural distinctions.

The Horde marks most reptilians for combat roles.

**Salinean:** Salineans are an amphibious species from the predominantly flooded world of Salineas Prime. By some stroke of fortune, there were many aquatic worlds in the cosmic neighbourhood around Salineas Prime, allowing them to expand quite a bit when human explorers brought jump drive. They have a wide variety of appearances, generally related to surface proximity – for some reason, those who favour different ocean depths tend to look less human than those who frequent the shallows – but they are all considered the same species.

Unusually, Salineas Prime has a clear record of its first contact with humans – a scouting squadron led by the explorer Maanvi Kaur. Kaur’s fleet became the nucleus of a human settlement on the oceanic world, and many Salinean cultures still show traits picked up from them – some have a tradition of carrying a small dagger, while others tend to favour cuisine with a lot of strong spices, for example.

The Horde classifies Salineans as a multipurpose species, similar to humans.

**Skitlet:** A general term for animals between the size of a mouse and a large dog, usually referring to species that are of a low danger to citizens. Many breeds are domesticated, although wild and feral skitlets can be found on countless worlds. The most common skitlet breed, the khatmei, is typically about a foot long, not counting the tail, and possesses a furry back, a smooth scaly belly, large eyes and a long tongue; it feeds on insects.

Special bonus: The English text for Rogelio’s report in chapter 10.

“Polypus was the first to notice the ruins.

“I don’t know if I trust Polypus. He arrived on the same transport as the Force Captain, but she’d never met him and he seems weird. It’s like he’s always watching us – especially Kyle. And sure, he seems really nervous and twitchy, but you get him into a fight and it’s like he turns into a completely different person, just this really cold and calculating opponent. Still, as long as he’s on our side, I can forgive some suspicious behaviour.

As we spread out, moving to occupy the ruins, my dear friend Kyle was struck by an arrow and rendered unconscious, and before I could secure him, I sensed enemies approaching. The rebels had been waiting for us and had gotten into position to launch an ambush.

Catra, apparently sensing a chance to get out from under the Force Captain’s eye, raced ahead to deal with the rebel artillery. I caught a glimpse of Adora emerging to engage her, which must have unsettled Catra a lot, before a tide of vines descended on the Force Captain and I moved to assist her. I could see Lonnie fighting a Salinean with a trident; she was doing well, but I could tell she was outmatched. I called to her to pull back, so we could form a united front, but I don’t think she heard me, so Scorpia and I dealt with the vegetation while she fought the Salinean alone.

“At length, we managed to drive back the plants. I found Kyle in a heap near the front of the battlefield – the enemy hadn’t attacked him, thank the stars – when Polypus told us that he’d found something important.”


End file.
